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AN 



AMICABLE DISCUSSION 



CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL 



DEDICATED TO THE 



CLERGY OF EVERY PROTESTANT COMMUNION, 



AND REDUCED INTO THE FOUM OF LETTERS, 



BY THE RIGHT REV. J. F. M. TREVERN', D. D., 

1 

Bishop of Strasbourg (late of Aire.) 




Tunc demum vos Spiritum Sanctum habere cognoscite, quando mentem vestram, 
per sinoeram charitatem, unitati consenseritis haerere. 

St. Aug. t. V. Serm. XXL de Pantec. 



BALTIMORE: 

PUBLISHED BY LUCAS BROTHERS, 

170 BALTIMORE STREEET. 

n 



s. 



V* 



<#> 







REPUBLISHED WITH THE APPROBATION OF 
THE ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE. 

Baltimoue, November 10th. 1856. • • 



*lf^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



LETTER I 



A sJiort account of thefrst establishment of the Chunk if En<jhui<l. 

PAGE 

A Short History of the English Reformation . ... 1 

Schism commenced under Henry VIII. ...... 3 

Calvinism adopted under the youthful Bdward Yl. . . .4 

Unity re-established under Mary 5 

«J — —broken again under Elizabeth G 

The Church of England, such as W9 now behold it, established con- 
trary to the Doctrine of the iiishops aud contrary to ecclesias- 
tical laws, by the authority of the Queen aud her Parliament 7 
Radical defect of competency both in tin- Queen and her Parliament 8 
Nullity of their attempts and innovations . .... 9 

Nullity of their establishment . . ..... 9 

Necessity of renouncing it, and returning to that which, from the 
Conversion of Great Britain to Christianity, subsisted there till 
the twentieth year of Henry VIII. . . . . .10 

LETTER II. 

On Unit i/. 

Considerations upon the situation of England as to religion after the 

change effected by Elizabeth . . . . . .11 

The ancient uniformity gives way to a host of modern sects . .12 
These sects all spring from the very principle of the Reformation. — 
Unitv, on the contrary, the essential object of the revelation 

of Jesus Christ 12 

Reason alone would convince us of this .... . ] 3 

The Holy Scripture gives it the highest degree of certainty, and also 
the uniform doctrine of the apostles, of their disciples and of 

the purest ages of the church 14 

Protestant societies, after having broken unity, still continue to pay 
homage to it. — The Lutheran, Calvanistic, English and Scotch 
confessions, and the acknowledgments and declarations of the 
most distinguished English Divines 37 

APPENDIX I. 

The allegations brought forward by Protestants, to justify their schism, would 

not justify it, were they even true and well-founded . . . .44 

They are false and unfounded 44 

(iii) 



Protestants are compelled to admit it 44 

They do admit it. Confession of Augsburg, Luther, Calvin, the Calvinists' 
of France, Beza at the Conference of Poissy, Daille, the University of 
Helmstadt, Thorndyke, Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterburv, &c. . 45 

They who first raised their voices against the Church had no right and no 

character to e.-ublish a right to be heard 50 

APPENDIX II. 

An historical account of the opinions that the First Reformers have 
given for one another, and of the effects of their preaching. 

Who were they ? Opinions pronounced by the first Reformers upon one an- 
other 52 

Luther characterized by himself 59 

by Henry VIII ! ! 52 

■ by the Church of Zurich ".53 

by Zuinglius , 53 

by Erasmus 53 

by Calvin \ \ \ 53 

Carlostadtius by Melanchton 54 

by the Lutherans [54 

Zuinglius characterized by Melanchton and Luther, by himself and a Synod" 

of Lutherans • 55 

Calvin by himself, by Stancharus, by Schlussemberg, Heshusius, Bullinger,' 

Chatillon, and by the bishops of England 56 

On the disgraceful punishment he is said to have undergone in his youth in 

Noyon 53 

On his dreadful end ! ! 60 

Beza's Character drawn by Heshusius and Schlussemberg, and by the Luth- 

erans of Germany * . . .61 

Melanchton's by the Lutherans of the Synod of Altenburgh, and by Schlus- ' 

semberg 61 

(Ecolampadius' by himself, and by Luther .....* \ 62 

Ochin's by Beza 62 

What were the fruits of their preaching ! ! 63 

Testimonies of Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Aurifaber, Sturm, Czecanovius, * 

Wigandus, Smidelin, &c 64 

LETTER III. 

On the Infallibility of the Church. 

Immediate and necessary consequence of unity . . .67 

Christ was bound to furnish us with a means of preserving it. No 
other means can be assigned than the authority of a supreme 
tribunal possessing the right to pronounce on what is revealed, 

_ and to bring all minds to its decisions 68 

In point of fact the Scripture teaches that this was the means insti- 
tuted by Jesus Christ 68 

The apostles teach the same '. 1± 

Their disciples declare it .15 

The doctrine and faith of the primitive ages trace it out in the -wri- 
tings transmitted down from them, and in the acts of particu- 
lar and general councils .18 



PAGE 

Examination of the liberty which the Reformation gave to each one 

to interpret the Scripture 94 

This liberty is not proper for man . . . . . . .97 

Fatal consequences resulting from it ...... 98 

These consequences discovered and lamented, but too late, by the 

leaders of the reformation 104 

Their acknowledgments and regrets on this subject . . 105 

Their fruitless efforts, and the fruitless efforts of the convocation of 
1562, to resume authority, after having refused to acknowledge 
it in their legitimate bishops and the universal Church . . 109 
That the dogma of an infallible authority in what is revealed does not 
make slaves of those who admit it. The extravagance of any 
Such charge 112 

LETTER TV. 

On the Authority of Tradition. 

It is not true, as has often been pretended by the Reformers on the 
Continent, and after them by the Church of England, that 
every thing essential in revelation is contained in the Holy 
Scripture .......... 115 

Proofs to the contrary, from Scripture itself, and from several essen- 
tial articles admitted in Protestant societies . . . .118 

From the method pursued by the apostles . ... . . 120 

From the practice of the primitive church . . . . .122 

From the principles by which it was regulated in the examination and 

condemnation of various heresies 125 

From the positive doctrine of the Fathers 126 

From the acknowledgment of the most celebrated Protestants them- 
selves, both upon the Continent and in great Britain, such, for 
example, as the Confession of Augsburgh, Zuinglius, Calvin, 
Beza, Grotius, Leibnitz, Molanus, the bishops of Elizabeth, 
their apologists, Jewel, Croft, Beveridge, &c, &c. There must 
therefore be admitted two deposits of Christian Revelation, the 
written and the unwritten word ...... 132 

The written and unwritten word compared ..... 140 

LETTER V. 

On the Doctrines taught bij the CJmrdi. 

The truths contained in this double deposit are known to us from the 

doctrine of the Church 143 

This doctrine or teaching belongs to the successors of the apostles, 

the bishops, exclusively 144 

They do not make any new articles of faith 145 

They can neither add to, nor take from, revelation .... 145 
A doctrinal decision may be pronounced by each bishop in his diocess, 
more eminently by the Sovereign Pontiff, and by particular or 

general councils . . .148 

A* 



VI 

The general acceptation of the dispersed bishops affixes to all these de- 
cisions the seal of infallibility 150 

Objection drawn from the apparent opposition among Catholics as to 

where this infallibility resides . . 151 

Beply .'.'." 151 

A word of advice to Protestants, Greeks and Ultramontanists respect- 
ing the spiritual authority which all Christians are to recognize 
in the successor of St. Peter 155 

LETTER VI. 

On the Eucliariat. 

We believe mysteries from the testimony and doctrine of the Church, 
and among these mysteries that of the real presence of Jesus 
Christ, and of the change of substance in the Euchariset . .157 

The Convocation of 1562 formally rejects the change of substance, and 
indirectly gives it to be understood that it did not think very 
favorably of the real presence ...... 160 

Preliminary observations on the prejudices created by the imagination 

and the senses against the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist . 161 

General observations on mysteries . . ... . 167 

The method which good sense points out to be followed in the exami- 
nation of mysteries ........ 16*7 

Its application to the mystery of the Eucharist . 167 

The words of promise in the 6th chapter of St. John, discussed at 

len gth 169 

Comparison drawn between the Sacramentarians and the Jews, who 

refused to believe in the promise of the Man-God . . .171 

Necessity of ranging ourselves among the faithful disciples who on that 

occasion testified an implicit reliance on his words . . 188 

LETTER VII. 

The words of Institution. 

Accomplishment of the promise 189 

The Institution of the Eucharist according to the compared accounts 

of the three evangelists ....... 191 

Luther and his followers, retained in the sense of the real presence by 

the force of the words ........ 193 

Zuinglius adopts the figurative sense, and causes it to be adopted at 

Zurich, whence it passes to the Sacramentarians . . .194 
The Convocation of 1562, by suppressing the adoration, indirectly 

attacks the real presence ....... 196 

If Christ is present in the Eucharist he must be adored there . .196 

The Calvinists of one opinion on this point 196 

Their testimonies •••....... 196 

General observation against the advocates of the figurative sense .' 196 
Refutation of the examples and arguments drawn from the Sacred 

Scripture to authorise the figurative sense .... 197 



Vll 

PAGE 

The real presence taught by distinguished divines of the Church of 

England 213 

By Kidley, Hooker, Andrew, Casaubon, Montague, Bilson, Taylor, 

Forbes, Cosin, Samuel Parker, &c, &c. .... 214 
The change of substance agreeable with the literal sense of the words 216 
The Calvinists admit this, and join us in proving it against the Lu- 
therans 218 

Acknowledgment of Zuinglius, Beza, Hospinian, &c. . . .218 
At first, Luther did not condemn transubstantiation . . . 221 

His acknowledgments 221 

The first version of the Confession of Augsburg restored . . . 222 
Protestant testimonies favorable to the change of substance : Grotius, 

Molanus, bishop Forbes, Montague, Thorndyke, Samuel Parker, 224 
Reply to the grammatical cavils of the Calvinists .... 229 

Review of the difficulties and the proofs ...... 229 

That the proofs should carry the day, with every impartial mind . 231 

LETTER VIII 

Examination of tradition upon the Eucharist. 

Tradition of the first six ages respecting the Eucharist . . . 233 
First general proof drawn from the discipline of secrecy . . . 233 
It is absurd to pretend that this discipline is to be dated only from the 

fourth century 238 

Proofs to the contrary from the calumnies of the pagans, founded 

upon their ignorance of what passes in the Christian Assemblies 238 
From the reproach of clandestinity made against the Christians . 240 
From the tortures employed to extort from them information of the 

nature of their worship ....... 240 

From the heroic constancy of the Christians in undergoing torments 

and death, rather than betray the secrecy of the mysteries . 241 
From the positive testimonies of Tertullian and Origen . . . 241 
Arguments founded on the discipline of secrecy .... 242 

It perfectly agrees with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . 243 
Not at all with the opinions of the Sacramentarians . . . 246 
If, at that time, the same was believed which we now believe, the Church 
ought to have commanded secrecy to the faithful from the motives 
which actually induced her to prescribe it ... 248 
If she believed what the Sacramentarians believe, this discipline ob- 
tained upon no satisfactory reason 248 

It obtained even against the most powerful and peremptory reasons 248 
Hence it follows that the occult discipline supposes the belief of the 

dogmas which the Catholic Church professes . . . 253 
And that this discipline coming from the Apostles, the dogmas con- 
cealed under it come also from them, and were delivered in all 
the Churches 254 



APPENDIX. 

Proofs dr aim form the ignorance of the pagans respecting the Eucharist. 

PAGE 

Proofs establishing that the discipline of secrecy was observed in the first five 

centuries 256 

For the first, the testimonies of Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Tacitus, Pliny 

and Celsus 256 

For the second, of Athenagorus, Justin, Irenajus, the Christians at Lvons, 

Tertullian, &c 257 

For the third, of Minutius Felix, Origen, Zeno, Bishop of Verona . . 258 

For the fourth, of St. Ambrose, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a Synod at Alexan- 
dria, St. Basil, St. Epiphanius,"St. Chrysostom, Gaudentius, St. Cyril 
of Alexandria, St. Augustin 259 

For the fifth, of Theodoret and Pope Innocent 1 261 

LETTER IX. 

Second general proof , drawn from the Liturgies 

Second general proof 263 

Liturgies 263 

Their apostolical antiquity established by the united testimonies of 
Pliny, Justin, Firmilian, St. Epiphanius, the author of the 
Apostolical Constitutions, St. Augustin, a work attributed to 
Proclus. Pope Celestine ....... 264 

Reflections on the liturgies during the first ages .... 268 

They were not written then, for fear of discovering the secret of the 

mysteries 269 

They were confided to the memory of the bishops and priests till the 

fifth age, when they began to be written . . . .270 

This reserve is inexplicable on Calvinistic notions, and agrees only 

with the Catholic doctrine . . .... 271 

How we are to distinguish in the liturgies what comes from the Apostles 273 

That we must attribute to them the dogmas traced out in all the litur- 
gies at the time when they first appeared, about the council of 
Ephesus 274 

All of them uniformly trace out the real presence, the change of sub- 
stance, the adoration, the altar, the sacrifice, prayer for the dead 276 

Passages taken from the liturgy in the 8th Book of "the Apostolical 
Constitution, from the Roman, Spanish, Gallican and Greek 
liturgies, and from the liturgy of Jerusalem .... 278 

From the liturgies of the Apostles, of Alexandria, Constantinople, 
Ethiopia, the Jacobites, the Syrians, the Chaldean Nestorians, 
the Nestorians of Malabar, the Armenians, &c. . . .279 

These dogmas were therefore believed in the 5th Age through all the 

Christian Churches 292 

They are therefore of Apostolic origin, and admit no other supposition ^93 

And at this day all Christians ought to admit and profess them together 

with the primitive liturgies 296 



IX 

APPENDIX. 

Particular belief of the principal Churches respecting the Apostolicity 
of their Liturgies. 

PAGE 

Testimonies of the principal Churches on the apostolicity of their respective 

liturgies 297 

Of Innocent I. and of G-elasius for the Koman liturgy .... 297 

Of Innocent I. and Isidore of Seville for the Spanish liturgy . . . 297 
Of Irenams and Hilduin, Abbe St. Denis, for the liturgy of the Gauls . 298 
Of the General Council in Trullo, and of I irmillian, for the liturgies of Syria 

and Jerusalem 299 

Of Leontius for the liturgy of Constantinople 299 

Of Rufinus and the ancient Coptic authors for the liturgies of Ethiopia Alex- 
andria and Egypt .301 

LETTER X. 



Hon upon the Eucharist. 

Particular proofs 303 

Testimony of the Fathers of the six first centuries .... 305 

That, to know their true sentiments we must consult the writings in . 
which they must have explained them clearly, and not those, in 
which, from the discipline of secrecy, they were obliged to veil 
and conceal them 306 

That to the writings of the first kind belong the catechetical instruc- 
tions composed for the Neophites, and to those of the latter, the 
discourse delivered before the uninitiated, and the works des- 
tined for the public 308 

Exposition of the catechetical discourses upon the Eucharist, those of 
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzum, Gregory of 
Nyssa, St. Ambrose, of the ancient author of the Books on the 
Sacraments, of St. Gaudentius of Brescia, St. Chrysostom, St. 
Augustin, St. Cyril, of Alexandria, Eusebius of Ernessa . 309 

Arguments established upon the catechetical and other discourses de- 
livered in presence of the faithful alone .... 323 

The doctrine of the Fathers absolutely incompatible with the opinions 

of the Sacramentarians . . . . . . .326 

The Fathers were aware of the difficulties, and the sublimities of our 

Eucharistic Dogmas . 327 

They perceived and admitted the strongest consequences deducible from 

them, such as Deists and Protestants have so often objected to us 330 

They believed therefore and taught what we believe and teach . . 332 

A general and sufficient reply to all the passages from the Fathers pro- 
duced by Protestants 342 

They produce them from writings in which the Fathers were obliged 

to express themselves with obscurity . . .- . 343 

They cannot, neither will they ever produce any passages from the 
writings in which they were bound to speak clearly and openly 
respecting the Eucharistic mysteries ..... 345 

A separate and purely metaphysical argument in proof of the Apostoli- 

city of our dogmas . . ...... 346 

It is a fact that they are at this day belif ved as dogmas, having been 

always believed from the time of the apostles to our times . 346 



PAGE 

And it would have been impossible for men to hare this persuasion 
respecting them, if they had not actually come down from the 

apostles . . 348 

The incomprehensibility of our dogmas re-produced against our proofs 349 
Reply, and conclusion of the three last letters on the Eucharist . 350 

APPENDIX. 

Testimonies of the Fathers. 

A series of passages extracted from St. Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Origen, 
St. Cyprian, St. Dionvsius of Alexandria, Firmillian, the Council of 
Nice/ St. James of "Nisibis, Eusebius of Emessa, St. Basil, St. 
Ephrem, St. Optatus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, 
St. Ambrose, the Author of the Books on the Sacraments, St. Epip- 
hanius, St. Paulinas, St. Gaudentius, St. John Chrysostom, St. John 
of Jerusalem, St. Maruthas, St. Jerome, St. Augustin, St. Isidore of 
Pelusium, St. Cyril of Alexandria, from the synod of Alexandria, the 
Council of Ephcsus, St. Proclus, St. Peter Chrysologus, St. Leo, The- 

odoret, Hersychus, Salvian, St. Cesarius 352 

Last words of Bere'ngarius on his death-bed 376 

Passages from Erasmus 376 

Concluding general reflections on the passages quoted by Protestants from 

the Fathers 377 

On those from St. Augustin in particular 378 

The primitive doctrine contrasted with that of the Reformation . . . 379 
Consideration upon the ignorance of the sixteenth century touching ecclesi- 
astical antiquity . . 379 

This ignorance acknowledged by Chatillon 379 

Proved more particularly with respect to the Eucharistic dogmas from the 
division of the Reformation as to the real presence, and its agreement 

against the change of substance 379 

From the dispute between Melanchton and G3colampadius .... 380 
From the opinions of Farel and Calvin in the dispute at Lauzanne . . 381 
From Jewel's Apology in England, and the Sermon he preached and re- 

nreached in London . 382 

LETTER XI. 

Confession. 

On Confession. — The natural shame, which leads us to conceal our 
faults, sufficiently proves that men would never have submitted 
to confession from any human authority. .... 387 

Accordingly, it did not originate from such authority . . . 388 
Revelation teaches us that it was established by Jesus Christ . . 389 
Passages from the New Testament on Confession discussed . . 390 

Its necessity flows from its institution, because if there were any more 
easy means of obtaining pardon, men would have recourse to it, 
and confession, being no longer necessary, would become null 392 

Tradition considered 399 

It is not true that private confession sprang from public confession . 399 

The opposite is the truth 400 

Without the divine institution of sacramental confession, the establish- 
ment of public confession would have been impracticable . 400 
This latter, such as it was practised, must have been preceded by pri- 
vate confession 401 



XI 

PAGE 

Unexceptionable authorities of those times teach us this, and change/ 401 
our conclusions into facts . . . . . . . \ 407 

The allegations of our adversaries refuted ..... 403 

It is not true that the ancient Christians confessed only scandalous 

crimes, and always aloud in public 403 

It is not true that they confessed their sins to God alone, and never ) 405 
to the priests $ 416 

It is not true that ancient confession did not extend to the mention- ) 410 
ing of every fault $ 421 

Confession is, from the precept of Jesus Christ, an imperious and indis- 
pensable law 419 

An alarming consequence for those who have suppressed the only 

means of obtaining the pardon of their sins .... 424 

Reply touching the too real abuses discovered by Protestants in the 

confessions of indifferent Catholics ..... 426 

Comparison between two sinners who wished to be converted, the one 
in a Protestant communion, and the other in the Catholic 
Church 427 

That confession offers to the Catholic penitent more succor and secu- 
rity, but at the same time require of him more labor and 
exe-tio «... 128 

LETTER XII. 



Satisfaction ........... 43 J. 

Its necessity proved from the conduct of G-od towards man, from the 
examples of the true penitents before and since Jesus Christ, 
from the doctrine of the apostle, and that of the primitive 
Church, from the doctrine of the most distinguished Fathers . 431 

That it is advantageous for us that our Divine Mediator, having taken 
upon himself the satisfaction which surpasses our strength, has 
left us that which is proportioned to us . . . . . 435 

That it is unreasonable to pretend that our satisfaction derogate from 

the merits of our Redeemer ...... 43? 

That this allegation is repugnant to venerable antiquity . . . 438 

Strange conduct of the Reformers, who, in' place of recommending 
satisfactory works, suppressed by little and little what remained 
of them in their time ........ 440 

Their blows fall directly upon this primitive Church, always extolled 

of and always attacked by them 441 

LETTER XIII. 

Indulgences and Purgatory. 

Indulgences presented in their true light — justified from the example 

of St. Paul and of the primitive Church .... 446 

Dispositions requisite fur receiving the full effect of them . . . 448 

That, far from being injurious to penance, they support works of pe- 
nance, and only supply for whal is deficient of them . . 448 

That they ought to be sought after by all penitents .... 453 



Xll 

PAGE 

That the temporal punishments due to our sins must be expiated in the 
other world, when they have not been sufficiently expiated in 

this 455 

Purgatory — Utility of praying for the dead 456 

Acknowledged in the Synagogue, approved by our tSaviour . . 458 
Taught by the apostles, as we learn from the uniformity of the liturgies 

and from the testimonies of various Fathers .... 461 
Luther and Calvin are agreed upon this with us .... 463 

It is certain that they are not agreed between themselves . . . 463 
One part of the Lutherans pray for the dead : Molanus tells us so . 464 
A part of the Angelicans do the same ; witness Bishops Forbes, Bar- 
row, Sheldon, Blandford, Dr. Thorndyke, &c. ... 465 

APPENDIX. 

On Praying for the dead. 

Agreement of all the liturgies in praying for the dead .... 468 

Liturgies of the Nestorians of Malabar, Chaldea, Armenia, and China . 468 
Liturgies of Constantino])] e and Russia, of the Jacobite Copts and Syrians, 

and of the Christians of Ethiopia .... . . 469 

Liturgies of the orthodox Syrians and Jacobites 470 

LETTER XIV. 

Invocation of Saints. 

Protestants cheerfully recommend themselves to each others prayers, 
and yet on vain pretexts refuse to invoke the prayers of the 

saints 472 

They gratuitously suppose that the saints cannot hear us . .472 

Many facts of the Old and New Testament prove that God can and 

actually does grant them a knowledge of our prayers . . 473 
We do not multiply mediators by asking the prayers of the dead, any 

more than by asking those of the living .... 476 
Essential difference between the mediation of Jesus Christ and that of 

his saints 478 

Our invocation is so distant from idolatry, that there would be impiety 
in saying to Jesus Christ what we say to the saints, or to the 

saints what we say to Jesus Christ 479 

In condemning this invocation, the reformed condemn also the primitive 

Church 481 

The Fathers have taught us to invoke the saints .... 482 
Passages from Irenreus, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Ephrem, 
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzum, Chrysostom, Asterius, 

Ambrose, Augustin, Basil, &c 483 

The reformed at variance with their principles 488 

At domestic variance with one another ...... 489 

Luther against Luther ......... 490 

CEcolampadius against Gicolampadius ...... 490 

Zuinglius and Melanchton corrected by Luther .... 491 

Forgetfulnees of Calvin, whom Luther had taught .... 492 

Theodore Beza, and the Calvinists in general opposed to Peter Martyr 492 
Molhcnus, CEcolampadius 492 



Xlll 

PAGE 

The confession of Augsbourg refuted by Luther, Bucer and a great 

many Lutherans 493 

That of the Arrninians by Grotius 493 

That of the Church of England, by Bishop Montague among others . 494 

In this opposition of Protestants, which should carry the day? . 495 

The invocation of saints supposes their intercession for us . . 496 

The latter generally admitted 49T 

It is of faith that the saints intercede for us 497 

It is not of faith that we must invoke them ..... 491 

What we are to understand by the communion of saints . . . 49*7 

LETTER XV. 

Respect paid to Relics. 

On respect paid to relics 499 

Its antiquity 503 

It comes from the apostolic times ....... 503 

Examples of the first Christians of Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, and 

Smyrna 504 

Doctrine of the Fathers, Eusebius, St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril, of Jeru- 
salem, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, &c. &c 504 

LETTER XVI. 

Images. 

The fury of the Iconoclasts renewed by the Sacramentarians . .510 
The Iconoclasts of the eighth century carried their extravagance so far 

as to proscribe the arts of painting and sculpture . . . 512 
Those of the sixteenth, more moderate in this respect, still however 

banish images from the Churches 514 

They differ in their charges against us for the respect we pay to images 515 
Some get down as idolatry the honor we pay to their prototypes in 

their presence 516 

This honor and respect justified from the imputation . . . 516 
Others maintain that these honors are at least contraventions of the 

decalogue 518 

The decalogue explained, and images maintained, without injury to 

the decalogue, in the honors due to them . . . .518 
Essential difference between our images and idols, and between the 

worship paid to idols and the respect we pay to images . . 522 
That if, in idolatrous countries the paying of this respect might be 

dangerous to neophytes, it never can become dangerous to the 

faithful in Christian nations ....... 528 

It presents to the latter great advantages 529 

Admirable effects of painting: it speaks to the eyes and the heart, 

awakens faith and piety 529 

The Fathers have extolled the advantages of the representations they 

had under their eyes 530 

We have some before our eyes which would have shared their enco- 
miums ........... 533 



A moderate use of images and paintings recommended to the reformed 

communions .......... 534 

That by adopting them, they would approximate to the primitive 
Church, whose practice is here certified to us by Photius, the 7th 
and 8th general councils, SS. Augustin, Ambrose, Basil and 
Athanasius, and even by Tertullian, by the example of Constan- 
tiue, and by a curious and ancient fact related iu Eusebius . 535 

That Lather and the Lutherans admit images in their Churches . 540 

Bishop Montague is their apologist and eulogist .... 541 

LETTER XVII. 

On Hie Oi'oss. 

The Reformation, by forbidding the sign of the cross and removing it 
from the altars, public places and highways, is again in mani- 
fest opposition to Christian antiquity 543 

The expression of SS. Augustin, Jerome and Ambrose, and of Ter- 
tullian for the Latin Church 544 

Of St. Chrysostom, Ephrem, Cyril of Jerusalem. Basil, and Athana- 
sius "of Origen and Eusebius, &c. for the Greek Church . 545 

Explanation of the general word adore 548 

This explanation admitted by Aubertin .... . 550 

Well deserved reproaches which the Reformers might and ought to 

make to Catholics respecting the sign of the cross . . .551 

Better deserved and more severe reproaches due to their blind rage 

against the cross, which has saved and will judge the world . 552 

LETTER XVIII. 

Conclusion. 

Recapitulation . 553 

The Reformation in open contradiction to its principles . . • . 554 
It every where announced its intention to attach itself to the Primi- 
tive Church, and yet has formally left it in every point we have 

discussed 555 

The principal source of its mistakes and errors, attributed to the ig- 
norance generally prevailing, at the period of the Reformation, 

on ecclesiastic antiquity 557 

That it would be highly unreasonable in our present enlightened age, 
to persist in being led by an age, which was not, and which 
could not be so enlightened as ours ..... 561 

That it is high time and most necessary to abandon the Reformation 

and return to unity 563 

Particular motives which should lead the English parliament to it . 565 

The established Church in England 567 

The English nation 568 

General and peremptory motives making it an indispensible duty, for 
all Protestant communions in a body, and immediately, for 
each of their members in particular 573 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



The Discussion Amicale, a translation of which is 
now respectfully presented to the public, was first pub- 
lished in 1817, — a second edition appeared in 1824. 
The more than ordinary excellency of this controversial 
work has never been disputed either by friend or foe ; 
and its substantial merit, original style and manner, 
and peculiar applicability to the English nation have 
for some years caused numerous highly respectable in- 
dividuals to wish that it might appear in our own lan- 
guage. Latterly this wish has become more emphati- 
cally expressed, in consequence of the appearance of 
the Difficulties of Romanism, a work written by the 
great champion of Protestantism, the Rev. G. S. Faber, 
of Long-Newton, professing to be a fair exposure and 
complete refutation of the Discussion Amicale. As this 
book of Difficulties seemed calculated to give a very 
illusory idea of the general character of the volumes it 
attacked ; as it evidently suppressed some of the most 
powerful arguments therein contained, and mutilated 
or distorted others ; as it undeniably gave, in some 
instances, a most grossly false translation of very im- 
portant passages, and on this false interpretation raised 
no small proportion of its arguments ; it was thought 
very desirable that the Bishop of Strasbourg's original 
work should be fairly and strictly rendered into English, 
and thus appear in its own defence, that the purely 

(xv) 



XVI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

English reader might be enabled to form a more correct 
estimate of its character and merits. The translator 
here begs leave to state, that he has followed his author 
throughout with timorous scrupulosity, perhaps with 
servility ; and that, if he has erred, he has done so in- 
voluntarily, his only object in undertaking his arduous 
task having been to aid the cause of truth, justice, and 
Religion. 



DEDICATORY EPISTLE, 

TO THE 
CLERGY OF EVERY PROTESTANT COMMUNION. 



Gentlemen, — 

In complying with the demand that is made for the publica- 
tion of a Discussion undertaken and conducted in the secrecy of 
confidence, I cannot but be desirous of addressing it immediately 
to you. Indeed it seems to me most reasonable and just to pre- 
sent it, in the first instance, to those members of the Reformed 
Communions, who, while they are more particularly interested in 
becoming acquainted with its contents, are also, by their superior 
attainments, better qualified to decide upon its merits. Now 
therefore it shall go forth to the world, with the hopes that it 
may find access to its most desired destination. May it speedily 
appear before you, to undergo its first examination and receive 
its first judgment at your tribunal. "Whilst I bespeak your in- 
dulgence for the defects and imperfactions you will discover in 
the style and manner of the work, I am bold to defy your most 
rigid and unsparing scrutiny as to its matter and substance. 
This may look to you like presumption : but assuredly it is not 
so : for never were quoted with more feeling conviction those 
words of the apostle — ' Not that we are sufficient to think any 
thing of ourselves, as of ourselves ; but our sufficiency is from 
God.' (2 Cor. iii. 5.) I feel the full force of this passage: it 
penetrates to my heart ; it alone inspires me with courage and 
confidence. 

If, Gentlemen, you would take the trouble to study the char- 
acter of your first Reformers, as depicted mutually by themselves, 
you would join with us in no longer considering them as men 
raised up by God to repair the ruins of his Church : if you were 
shocked equally with myself at the enormity of their schism and 
the frivolous pretexts alleged in its excuse, your zeal and utmost 
energies would be called into immediate exertion to effect its ter- 
mination : if you were convinced equally with myself that the 
b* (xvii) 



XV111 DEDICATORY EPISTLE. 

doctrines retrenched by them were the doctrines of antiquity, 
you could no longer be induced to believe that the suppression of 
such articles has tended to approximate you to the primitive 
Church ; you would rather unite with me in attributing their 
mistaken conduct to the ignorance of the age in which they lived. 
Pay only a little attention to the proofs presented in this discus- 
sion on that head : weigh them as candidly as they have been 
collected : peruse them as they have been written, with calm 
composure of mind and in the presence of G-od. I look for this 
favor from all you, who respect religion and tender your salva- 
tion. But as for those, who, blinded by prejudice, and igno- 
rance, and hurried away by their passion, run eagerly in pursuit 
of the enjoyments of this life, and are reckless of the world to 
come, from them it is in vain to expect a hearing. For such I 
do not write, but pray. 

Gentlemen, you are well aware that highly distinguished indi- 
viduals belonging to your body, have, from the Reformation 
down to our times, unceasingly proclaimed to the world that the 
points at issue between you and us arc but slight abuses introduced 
into the Church; 'that it would be most easy to put an end to all 
disputes ; 2 that if on the one hand, there exists an indispensable 
necessity for all Christians to become again united ; it is certain, 
on the other, that Protestants icill never accomplish this union 
among themselves, unless by becoming previously re-united, to the 
See of Rome ; 3 that there is no dogma, essential to salvation, but 
what is taught by the Church of Rome ; nor any propounded by 
her which are incompatible with salvation ;* and that, according 
to the judgment of all well informed theologians, the distance be- 
tween you and us is not so great as is generally imagined." See- 
ing that your own teachers have thus publicly professed these 
sentiments and numerous others of similar tendency, permit me 
to ask, what are you doing by thus prolonging a schism, which, 
according to the opinion of these impartial and enlightened in- 
dividuals, ought never to have been begun ; according to their 
convictions and wishes should have ceased as quickly as possible: 
and which in their opinion there would be but little difficulty in 
destroying? What, I ask, are you doing by thus prolonging 
the schism ? You are rendering yourselves accomplices of the 
greatest evil that Christians can effect : of an evil which has not 
indeed originated with you, but which receives the support of 

1 Confession of Augsburg, art. XXI. '•'Melanchtou's Letter to Francis I. 
3 Grotius, last fiejdy to Rivet. — Thorndyke, On Forbearance, p. 44. 4 Thorndyke, 
JSgut. p. 146. ' Declaration of the University of Helmstadt; 1707. 



DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XIX 

your ministry. By you, and as far as in you lies, it is held to- 
gether and perpetuated ; you hold the people attached to it by 
your example ; and generations are enchained to it by your tal- 
ents — nay, even by your virtues. You defeat (and perhaps, 
Gentlemen, you may have never seriously reflected on this awful 
point) you defeat, I say, the views of our Divine Legislator, 
whose desire was to establish unity in his Church: you rob him 
of the most striking and most generally palpable proof of his 
divine mission ; the proof to which he himself has referred us in 
the unanimity of his followers. 1 By the substitution of divi- 
sions and discords in the place of union and unanimity, your an- 
cestors, and you, who continue the work, have thrown confusion 
and dismay into the minds of the weak and superficial. They 
know longer know which way to turn, or what communion to 
prefer. Some of them you have led into indifference, and others 
into positive incredulity. Hence the crimes that deluge the 
world, to which you and we can equally bear testimony. These 
your first reformers clearly foresaw — they announced them at a 
distance, almost as soon as they had established those principles, 
from which they saw them inevitably derived upon future gene- 
rations. 

Destroy the schism — and you will eradicate the evil, you will 
arrest its progress and instantaneously diminish its frightful rav- 
ages. Destroy the schism — and you will accomplish the wish of 
the most religious and enlightened persons of the reformation ; 
they who had hitherto regarded one another as strangers, would 
thenceforth act as friends, and, like brethren meeting after a 
long separation, would prevent each other with the kindly salu- 
tations of brotherly affection. Then would beam forth once 
more the joy and glory of the Church, indebted to you for the 
renewal of her pristine universality. The sixteenth century be- 
held your forefathers leave her bosom and curse it ; the nine- 
teenth would behold their descendants, flocking from all sides to 
their too long abandoned mother, who now can no longer remem- 
ber the pangs and the miseries occasioned by their separation, 
for joy of their return to her embraces. How admirable a spec- 
tacle ! to behold so many learned and zealous ecclesiastics, hith- 
erto at variance with themselves and with us, now spontaneously 
retracting their steps to the fold of unity ! What a striking 
lesson would such an event read to an age obstinately deaf to 
every other ! What a triumph for the religion of our Saviour ! 

'St. John, xvii. '21, '23. Sec the second letter. 



XX DEDICATORY EPISTLE. 

Then would the splendor of his divinity become irresistible ; the 
indifferent and incredulous would come in crowds, and, prostrate 
at his feet, acknowledge and renounce their ignorance and blind 
stupidity. The upright and fervent Christian, who is seriously 
in the affair of his salvation and a fervent adorer of Jesus Christ, 
of whatever country, or religious communion must certainly feel 
his heart burn within him at the idea of so glorious a prospect, 
and pant with impatient anxiety to co-operate in its accomplish- 
ment. 

Here is another visionary scheme, it will be said ; another at- 
tempt at what is impracticable. Impracticable indeed ! What! 
talk of impracticability, when we are under the most absolute 
necessity of effecting its realization ! And why impracticable, 
when by the re-union there is every thing to be gained in the 
next world and nothing to be lost in this ? Whence shall the 
insurmountable obstacles arise ? Surely, Gentlemen, not from 
yourselves — You who are more alive to the obligation, and who 
can fully appreciate the advantages of unity, would, I am confi- 
dent be disposed generously to make a sacrifice of transient ad- 
vantages, if such sacrifice were called for. But, so far as I can an- 
ticipate, this re-union, far from costing you sacrifices, would bring 
you even temporal advantages. I will suppose that you were 
left for a time in your present offices ; even so, you would exer- 
cise them on a more eminent theatre : the esteem and considera- 
tion, which you now enjoy, would acquire by the fact additional 
lustre and would appear in bolder relief. But numberless titles 
and dignities suppressed by the Reformation would again bloom 
forth : to these you would be called by the voice of the Church, 
who would naturally be inclined to give this preference to the 
children so happily recovered ; and if honors and preferments 
should pi-ove to be insufficient for her eagerness to invest you 
with them, our prelates would not be backward in imitating the 
example of their ancient predecessors, by quitting their episcopal 
chairs and pressing you to take their places. 

I am equally unable to forsee insurmountable obstacles on the 
part of the government. I am aware that the privileges, claimed 
in former times for the sovereign pontiff over the temporal pow- 
ers of kings, have, not unfrequently, given just cause of jealousy 
to the reigning powers. But these pretensions to temporal do- 
minion have on no occasion been generally asserted or recognised 
by Catholics; they are abandoned even there, where they first 
appeared : they are vanished — and to fear them at this time of 



DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XXI 

the day, would really be to tremble at a phantom. 'Tis true, 
we acknowledge a primacy of honor and jurisdiction, which 
distinguishes the successor of Peter from the successor of the 
rest of the apostles, and constitutes his see, the centre of all 
other sees. But this hierarchical and spiritual order, absolutely 
distinct in its object from all earthly governments, and on that 
account applicable to them all, far from producing mischief to 
them, can only tend to serve their cause and increase their sta- 
bility. Let it once be adopted, and immediately shall all reli- 
gious sects — the too prolific sources of jealousies and quarrels 
among subjects, and of troubles, agitations and discord in em- 
pires — universally disappear ; and to unity of spiritual govern- 
ment shall succeed the union of families, peace both in cities and 
country, and that invaluable concord of sentiment and affection 
which will always produce additional ease, compactness and en- 
ergy in the civil administrations of an empire. 

It must be from the people then that we are to expect this in- 
vincible opposition. I know with what tenacity they adhere to 
notions imbibed in their infancy. I know how deeply are im- 
printed on their minds the notions hostile to Catholics, which have 
been for so long a period inculcated into them. I will not 
dissemble how much it would cost you to remove such prejudices, 
to change their sentiments and gently lead their hearts to a 
reconciliation.- Unfortunately there are but too many obstacles 
and difficulties discernible in this affair. But wherefore dwell 
upon obstacles, or indulge in a useless enumeration of difficulties? 
The important enquiry is, whether or not it be necessary to en- 
counter and surmount them. If schism be compatible with sal- 
vation, well and good: matters may rest as they are; and we 
must save ourselves, each, as he can, in his respective religion. 
But, Gentlemen, you are well aware that this is by no means 
the case. The will of the Sovereign Master on this subject is 
well known to you ; his orders you have distinctly heard ; there 
is no room for mistake, no excuse for obstinate incredulity. He 
would have neither sect nor schism in his Church: these as you 
allow, fall under his malediction, and must therefore be removed. 
You know it to be his will and command that unity should exist 
among all his followers ; let those, then, who would be his, go 
over to unity. He recognises but one extensive fold for the whole 
of bis flock; in this fold let those congregate who would be 
reckoned in the number of his sheep. 

This necessity once acknowledged, as it actually is by us all, 



DEDICAT011Y EPISTLE. 



what remains to be done, but to make straight for our object 
and pursue the road we have taken, without indulging in foolish 
apprehensions of difficulties or stopping at every obstacle tnat 
may seem to oppose our progress? I do not however believe 
them to be so formidable as would appear to be imagined. In- 
struct the people in a different style and as truth would dictate; 
represent the Catholics, not as they have been too often portrayed, 
but as they really are ; explain our creed, not as it is ordinarily 
expounded, but as we explain it ourselves ; and rest assured, the 
people will relish your instructions, speedily will they recover 
from their prejudices and become attached to the truths you de- 
velope ; their ardor will be increased by the sense of sorrow they 
will experience at the discovery of their former misconceptions. 
If you desire certain proof of this, experience supplies it. How 
many Protestants of both sexes, of every rank and state of life, 
have we not seen, since the Reformation, undertake the exami- 
nation of the Catholic faith, and conclude by embracing it? I 
could produce numerous recent examples, within myown know- 
ledge, that have occurred in the different countries I have 
traversed. Never were conversions more frequent than at pre- 
eent : never was a greater disposition discoverable among Pro- 
testants to enter into Catholic unity. Perhaps the very excesses 
of the ase may account for this: the disgust and horror excited 
by them in the minds of the upright and reflecting naturally 
induce them to seek consolation and repose m the bosom of the 
ancient Church. 1 Let us give our encouragement to these happy 



I Since the first edition of this work, there has appeared the Ent^liens of the 
learned Lutheran minister, Baron de Stark: more^ recen tlvst ill th e fam us man- 
uscript of the immortal Leibnitz has been brought to light, lo these may be 
added the Votum pro pace, the work of the incomparable Grotiu , as he is ca ted 
bv Leibnitz; the acknowledgments of the great English doctors, who are cited 
throughout this work; and°the ^f^^TX^^uel Wis ^K 
public upon the necessity of a return to unity, by the Rev. Samuel \\ ix, V icar 
of St. Bartholomew the Less, London. „„;^f with ih* whnlp 

Such authorities as these ought certainly to have great weight with the whole 
bod v of the Pr 'testent Clergy : and, coming from the mouth of ministers, they 
would pduce an amazing 'effect upon the minds of their congregations. I 
Iriouslvput the question, Whether there is an individual, no matter of what 
Protestant communion, if the truth and his salvation be dear to him, who can, 
w[ h uf frembTng stlli harden himself against dogmas. ^«M«> 
first geniuses of the Reformation. I would gladly be intoi m d w i th W hat ^con- 
science they can at the present day refuse to surrender themselves to the appeal 
Of thf most lea rned men of their own party, and continue any longer obstmately 
to uphold divisions among the people, that are fatal to all happiness here and 

h ?c^njure Protestants to read frequently the Votum W«£ ^ ^°fe*^ 
Suslema Theolo.,icum of Leibnitz, Published in Latin and French at Pan*, 18U. 



DEDICATORY EPISTLE. XX1U 

dispositions. Let us endeavor to render general and to bring 
about an entire reconciliation. To us, as ministers of God, 
whether Catholics or not Catholics, to whatever country, commu- 
nion or government we may belong, to us is the lofty enterprise 
especially delegated. A crew of impious and infuriated monsters 
[shall we yield to the wicked in zeal?] have conspired in our 
days against Christ and his alters : Let us re-unite to consolidate 
and extend their dominion. Let us consign to oblivion our an- 
cient feuds, and with them the injuries and insults given and 
received : Let us cast all these miseries at the foot of the cross 
and join with one voice in recalling the Christian world to unity, 
ever bearing in mind the rigorous and indispensable precept of 
our divine Saviour on this subject, as also his prayer, hitherto so 
imperfectly understood by too many Christians : 

' That they also may be one ; in order that the world may 
believe that thou hast sent me.' St. John, xvii. 21. 23. 

TREVERN, 
Former Vicar General of Langres, now Bishop of Aire, 

(lately translated to the See of Strasbourg) 



AN AMICABLE DISCUSSION. 



LETTER I 



A Short Account of the first Establishment of the Church of 
England. 

Sir — I am very sensible of the confidence you are pleased to 
testify in my regard, by communicating to me the doubts that 
have arisen in your mind respecting your Church, together with 
your eager desire to discover the true Church, and by requesting 
my assistance in this important enquiry. I shall reply to you 
with whatever zeal is at my command : on that score, you shall 
have all that you can desire, though you will discover, no doubt, 
much to be desired in point of information and talent. My 
solicitude and my exertions are at the command of any one, who 
may do me the honor to call for them ; my state of life renders 
this a duty, and the grateful recollection of numberless favors 
bestowed upon me in former times by many of your countrymen, 
converts it into a pleasure, in your particular regard. In this 
undertaking, I fear no trouble, beyond that which it may occa- 
sion yourself. Controversial discussions are ill suited to the 
taste of the times, and all their interest is lost in consequence 
of the indifferency that prevails under the plausible name of 
liberality. As you have been unaccustomed to Such subjects, 
and may naturally be alarmed at entering upon them, I would 
willingly spare you a laborious discussion, and indeed am of 
opinion that a simple narrative of the manner in which your 
Church has been established, will of itself suffice to convinco 



2 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

you that you can no longer remain in it with safety. An 
historian 1 whose acknowledged celebrity is unfortunately sur- 
passed by his unfaithfulness, has asserted that the history of the 
English Reformation was its apology. Had he asserted the 
opposite to this, he would, in my opinion, have been much nearer 
the truth. Of this you will be enabled to judge by the following 
brief narrative, in which I shall not contradict him in facts, but 
shall merely have recourse to authorities, which he himself would 
have admitted. 

Eighteen years had elapsed since the marriage, which Henry 
VIII. had contracted, according to the dispensation granted in 
1509, by Julius II. with the widow of Arthur, his elder brother, 
Catharine of Arragon, daughter of Ferdinand, King of Spain. 
By her he had many children, of whom the Princess Mary was 
alone surviving. In 1521, appeared at the court of Catharine 
the famous Anne Boleyn. She was in her twenty-first year, and 
was just returned from France, where she had spent seven years 
in the presence of two successive Queens, and the Dutchess of 
Alencon, sister of Francis the First. Youth, beauty and the 
graces set off her person, and inspired the Monarch with that 
fatal passion, which a few years later drove Catharine from the 
throne, put Anne in her place, for a time, then sent her to the 
scaffold, and involved England in a schism, that continues to 
this day. 

As soon as it was known at Rome that Cranmer, the successor 
of "Warham to the see of Canterbury, had taken upon himself to 
annul the marriage of Catharine in order to facilitate that of the 
King with Anne Boleyn, the consistory, on the 24th of March, 
1533, gave a decision, by which they confirmed the validity of 
Henry's first marriage with Catharine, commanded the Prince to 
live with her, and, in case of refusal, pronounced against hiin 
a sentence of *escommunication. On hearing this, the enraged 
Monarch determined on breaking with the see of Rome and 
withdrawing himself and his dominions from the jurisdiction of 
St. Peter, whose authority and rights he himself had so stoutly 
1 Bumot. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 6 

defended against Luther. Already were the people prepared to 
expect a change ; sundry menaces had been sent to the sovereign 
Pontiff, and many blows had been struck at his jurisdiction. In 
fine, the Parliament meeting again in November, 1534, seizes 
hold of the jurisdiction of the Church and invests the crown 
with it, by an act, that decorates the King with the pompous 
title of the temporal and spiritual head of the Chm-ch of England. 
The King is eager to have his new jurisdiction acknowledged in 
the kingdom : he has a form of oath drawn up to which the 
bishops and clergy are obliged to subscribe ; whoever refuses, or 
pretends to raise his voice in favor of the spiritual supremacy of 
the Pope, is punished with death. Cromwell, Henry's vicar- 
gcneral, delegated by him to exercise his supremacy, runs over 
the different diocesses, suspends during his diocesan visits the 
jurisdiction of those bishops, who carry their cowardly com- 
pliance so far as to receive letters-patent, by which they acknow- 
ledge the Prince as the source and origin of all jurisdiction, 
themselves only exercising a precarious jurisdiction, subject to 
the good pleasure of the Sovereign. 1 The remainder of this 
reign was marked by the frequent exercise of spiritual jurisdic- 
tion, by the suppression of abbeys and monasteries, by various 
arbitrary dismemberments of diocesses, by erections of new sees, 
whose incumbents were consecrated and confirmed by letters- 
patent from the King. While, however, the supreme ruler was 
maintaining the schism with the utmost severity, he repelled 
heresy with equal rigor, and at the same time that he was pun- 
ishing Catholics, who still dared to declare themselves for the 
chair of Peter, he condemned to the flames the disciples of 
Luther and Calvin, who were busy enough to dogmatize in his 
states. But it was not difficult to foresee, that the schism would 
one day open the door to heresy ; and that, unity being once 
destroyed, innovations held in esteem upon the continent, would 
finally appear and gain ground in England. 

Scarcely bad Henry closed his eyes, when the Duke of Somer- 

1 We mud excepl Pi her, Bishop of Rochester, who courageously maintained 
hifl faith, and lost his head cm the scaffold. 



4 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

pet took upon him the guardianship of his nephew, Edward VI. 
and the administration of the kingdom, at the head of the council 
of regency, under the name of Protector. He was a Zuiuglian 
in heart, and had for his confidant, Archbishop Cranmer, who, 
no longer having reason to dissemble, soon threw off the mask, 
rnd openly entered into the views of the Regent. The Arch- 
bishop hoped to get his marriage into credit, which hitherto he 
hud been obliged to keep concealed. The Protector looked for 
the spoils of the Church — many others wished to share them 
with him — nothing but the reformation could serve them all to 
their satisfaction : it was therefore determined upon. The Duke 
of Somerset commences by proclaiming his nephew supreme 
head in spirituals and temporals : he then obliges the Bishops to 
receive commissions revocable at the will of the King, names 
commissaries to perform the visitation of the diocesses, and in the 
meantime suspends the exercise of all episcopal authority: he 
announces by an edict that a collection of articles of faith is 
preparing in the council; that it will appear before long, and 
that they are to hold themselves in readiness to receive it with 
submission : and in the meantime he forbids any ecclesiastic to 
preach in any assembly whatsoever. Already had Peter Martyr 
and Ochin his companion been called to labor in the work of 
reformation. Both of these were Italian religious, who like the 
greater part of the reformers, had quitted the monastic state to 
embrace that of marriage. The announced work at length ap- 
peared. It took away from public worship its ancient forms, 
and from ceremonies their majesty. Confession, works of satis- 
faction, purgatory, prayers for the dead, the invocation of saints, 
the honor paid to images, relics, and the cross were abolished : 
the ritual, the liturgy, the mass with its sacrifice, the real pre- 
sence with transub&tantiation, all are swept away, and England 
is astonished to behold itself on a sudden become Calvinistic. 

But by this time heaven appeared to be wearied with so many 
sacrileges. It removed from the world this youthful sovereign, 
whose weakness was so shamefully abused. 1 Mary, his eldest 
' 1553. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 5 

sister, brought to the throne the Catholic sentiments, with which 
her mother, the virtuous Catharine, had constantly inspired her 
— aided by the ministers with whom she was surrounded, and 
above all by the wise counsels of Cardinal Pole, her kinsman, 
she succeeded in bringing back her people to the obedience of 
the Holy See. The parliament had itself solicited the reconcilia- 
tion, which was pronounced by Cardinal Pole, nuncio of Julius 
III. The affairs of the Church were adjusted between the legate 
and parliament with as much prudence as moderation. 1 On their 
return to unity, they resumed the dogmas and liturgy, which 
had always been received in this great island from its conversion 
to Christianity to the young Edward. England, although trou- 
bled with the innovations and the outrages of the last reign, 
appeared generally to applaud itself for its return to Catholicity 
— and probably would have done so, much more, had not Glod, 
whose judgments are inscrutable, refused posterity to Mary, and 
deprived her, after a short reign, of her crown and her life. 

She was replaced 2 by her natural sister, Elizabeth, who was 
indebted for the crown to the last will of Henry rather than to 
her birth, for she was born in the lifetime of Catharine, his 
Queen and lawful wife ; and even the marriage of Anne her 
mother had been declared null, a little before her tragic end, by 
a solemn sentence of Archbishop Cranmer. It is said, that 
Elisabeth, convinced of the illegitimacy of her rank, ascended 
the throne with trembling step, and that being fearful of exciting 
dangerous commotions, she hesitated about the re-establishment 
of the Reformation, towards which, however, she had a secret 
inclination. Her ministers determined her to it, by repre- 
senting to her that there would be no security for her in union 
with the Church of Rome, which in its public documents had 
condemned her birth. " She was well aware," says Heylin, 3 
" that her condition of legitimate daughter and the primacy of 
the Pope could not subsist together." The rupture was then 
deliberately resolved upon : all that remained, was to prepare 
the public mind for it. The ministers took upon themselves to 

1 Iu.jI. *1558. 3 History of the Reformation. 
1* 



6 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

dispose the people for the projected changes, and conducted 
themselves in the business with consummate address. The Par- 
liament was convoked as early as the following December. In 
the House of Lords a law was proposed, which abolished that of. 
Mary, gave to Elizabeth the title of supreme governess in all 
things spiritual and temporal, with all the rights exercised by 
Edward and Henry, authorized her to execute her ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction by commissaries, and, to maintain her supremacy, 
obliged the bishops and their clergy to take an oath, the formu- 
lary of which was subjoined to the law. The first reading of 
this bill caused consternation and dismay among the bishops, who 
then were sitting in the upper house. In vain did the Arch- 
bishop of York and the Bishop of Chester, in the name of all 
the others, oppose their eloquence to the project of the law. It 
was carried, and but little attention was paid to their objections. 
It met with more opposition in the Commons. But ultimately 
the court party prevailed. Thus the ecclesiastical authority was 
taken away from the Holy See and the clergy of England, the 
entire spiritual jurisdiction attached to the crown, and schism 
erected into a law of the kingdom. 

Elizabeth, after the prorogation of her parliament, enters upon 
her new functions and proceeds gradually to work. She sum- 
mons all the Bishops into her presence, impatiently listens to all 
their representations, then dismisses them, saying, "that from 
henceforth she shall regard as the enemy of God and the Crown, 
whoever shall dare to support the pretensions of the Bishop of 
Bome." After this she sends forth into the diocesses her com- 
missaries, who upon the refusal of the Bishops to take the ap- 
pointed oath, declare them to be deprived of their office. They 
are all, with the exception of the Bishop of Landaff, driven from 
their sees. They are afterwards replaced by priests attached to 
government and to the new principles. Parker being nominated 
to the see of Canterbury, was consecrated and confirmed, ac- 
cording to letters-patent from the Queen, by some bishops of 
Edward VI. but who, being canonically deposed since the reign 
of Mary, had remained without jurisdiction. Parker, in his 



AND TUB REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 7 

turn, consecrated the first, who were nominated after him : in 
this manner, all the sees were filled in 1562, and then it was, 
that the new prelates agreed together upon a declaration of faith, 
which they drew up in thirty-nine articles and which received 
afterwards, the sanction of the parliament and the Queen. 

A new order of things now appears in England. Schism, for 
the second time, is about to be solemnly proclaimed. The nation 
is to be separated from the rest of Christianity, and is from 
henceforth to form a separate and independent Church, isolated 
from the whole world, like the territory in which it is enclosed. 
But by what right ? By what authority ? Such is the will of 
her, who aspires to become supreme governess in the Church. 

By this time, the convocation of the clergy, having taken 
alarm at the projects of the court, had done its utmost to prevent 
them, had declared in five articles the apostolic belief upon the 
dogmas that were said to be the most threatened ; the two uni- 
versities had loudly joined their voices with the chamber of the 
inferior clergy upon the four first articles ; the bishops had en- 
tirely adopted them, and of their own authority, as well as in 
compliance with the wishes of the priests, had transmitted them 
to Lord Bacon, the keeper of the seals :' but the declaration of 
the clergy stops none of these preconcerted measures ; the decla- 
ration of the spiritual guides, of the bishop, the judges of doc- 
trines, is put aside and despised ; and by whom ? by_her, whom 
they pretend to give to the successors of the apostles as supreme 
governess. 

From the cabinet these projects are carried into the parliament: 
on the first reading, the whole bench of bishops rise in opposition. 
In vain do they object before the peers ; in vain do they instruct 
their flocks, out of the house, that the oath of supremacy wounds 
faith and the sacred principles of the government of the Church : 
they arc not heard; they are stript of their jurisdiction, and 
driven from their churches: and by whom ? by the supreme 
govern 

New subjects are named to fill their places. But how shall 
1 Fuller's HiBtory, tin the Synod of 1559. 



8 ON THE CHURCU OF ENGLAND 

this nomination be confirmed, since the right to do it belongs 
exclusively to the Pope ? By whom shall be changed and over- 
thrown that order of things, which for centuries had been estab- 
lished for the communication of power in the Church ? by the 
supreme governess. 

She pretends to throw the discipline back to the times when 
the metropolitans were consecrated and confirmed by the bishops 
of the province : but this ancient discipline, being abolished by 
the Church, could be re-established only by it: but, according 
to the ancient discipline, the patriarch ordained and confirmed 
his metropolitans himself in person, or by the bishops of the 
province, his delegates; for so it had been regulated by the 
council of Nice, can. 4, and by other councils afterwards, as Dr. 
Field and Bishop Bramhall, to cite no others, confess : but on 
default of the patriarch of the west, neither the vice-president 
of Canterbury during the vacancy of the see, nor Bonner, bishop 
of London, nor Heath, metropolitan of the north, could be in- 
duced to lend their ministry to so manifest a violation of rule in 
the affair of Parker ; but these four consecrators, in open revolt 
against the Church, were without episcopal authority. Hodskins 
having never been more than a suffragan, suppressed and never 
re-established, and the other suffragans created by Henry VIII. , 
Scory, Barlow, Coverdalc, having been canonically deposed under 
the preceding reign, for cases of marriage; the two latter in 
contravention to their monastic vows. But supposing them to 
be possessed of diocesan jurisdiction, still they could not of 
themselves extend it to a metropolitan and primatical see : but 
no matter, these irregularities, these defects, these nullities, are 
superseded in a moment: and by whom, pray? still by the same 
female and by her letters-patent: by her, who from henceforth, 
with the diadem on her head and the pastoral crook in her hand, 
Speaks and commands obedience through her new spiritual lords, 
as their supreme governess. 1 

But whence did she derive this absolute power to undertake 

1 Femineo et a senilis inaudito fastu se papissam et caput Ecclesiae fecit. 'Mtart. 

Ohemnitim in Epist. ad elect. Lrandcbui-g. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 9 

such unheard of attempts and to produce so total a revolution ? 
From her House of Lords and Commons ? Well then ! let her 
parliament produce to the world the charter it has received from 
Jesus Christ : let it prove to us that Christ confided the govern- 
ment of his Church to the powers of the earth. But for our 
parts, we know, that he has confined it solely to the apostles and 
their successors. Thus, this parliament, although absolute and 
all-powerful in what relates to this world, was evidently without 
right and without power in the concerns of the Church ; it there- 
fore could transmit no spiritual jurisdiction to Elizabeth — Eliza- 
beth could not therefore take it away from those who occupied 
their sees before she mounted her throne, she could not, there- 
fore, transfer any from them to her intruded bishops, nor could 
they to their successors. Without right to destroy, repair, or 
rebuild, her attempts are null from the first. Her innovations 
all rest upon a false foundation, and the whole structure of the 
Reformation sinks of itself, and is buried in the hollowness of its 
own system. 1 



1 "An act was passed, by a lay parliament, requiring of the prelates to take the 
oath, under pain of being expelled from their sees. At the expiration of the time 
appointed for taking the oath, the fathers who refused it, found themselves driven 
from their palaces and deprived of their revenues and of all the honors and 

privileges of their episcopal dignity. So far we make no complaint Let the 

secular power take back, if it please, the favors it has bestowed upon the Church : 
we are content. It will injure the temporalities of the bishops; but will leave 
uninjured the consciences of the subjects. For Jesus Christ has imposed no 
obligation on the subjects of defending against the magistrates the civil rights 
and immunities of the bishops, but most assuredly does he require of us to defend 
the rights that he has himself conferred upon his Church for its preservation, in 
spite of secular power, even during persecution; rights that no human power 
ever gave or can ever take away. Yet our adversaries have carried their violence 
so far as to wrest them from it. Our most reverend fathers are driven from their 
flocks and from the care of souls; altars are raised against altars; bishops of an 
opposite party take the places of our own bishops: their churches are occupied, 
and they are BtiU living; their sees are succeeded to, before they are vacant, 
before the predecessors had l.l't them or had been deprived of their spiritual 
jurisdiction bj a sentence of bishops, to whom alone belongs the right of passing 
it, and even before they had been displaced bv any authority whose decision 
would be ratified in Heaven, for (ear, it would seem, lesl God mighl acknowledge, 
U legitimate bishops, those, whom the violence of human power had driven from 



10 ON TIIE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

There is no need of further discussion — the cause has been 
tried : the case is determined. The radical and essential defect 
of competency strikes with absolute nullity whatever was done 
by Elizabeth at that time. You may, if it so please you, call 
her work a parliamentary or Royal Church, ever bearing in 
mind, that it is a human and not a divine establishment. 1 He, 
therefore, who would belong to the Church of Christ, cannot 
remain in a Church of the above description. He must go back 
to the preceding reign, and enter into Catholic unity, in which 
from the establishment of Christianity in Great Britain to the 
twentieth year of Henry VIII., your ancestors, more fortunate 
than their descendants, had constantly the happiness of living 
and dying. 

their sees. From these considerations, we concluded, that our ties of dependence, 
uniting us to our bishops, remained as close and binding as ever, that we still 
were bound, in conscience, to pay them the same deference and submission as 
before, and that we could not, without crime, transfer them to intruders, who 
had thus destroyed Catholic unity, and virtually renounced Christ himself and 
all his graces." 

Uodwcll was very just in his ideas of the independence of the episcopal juris- 
diction. In the principles, which he maintained in 1689, and which he would 
have had quite other reasons for defending, a century earlier, you read the con- 
demnation of the proceedings of 1559, drawn out, unconsciously as it were, by 
one of the first divines of the University of Oxford. — H. Dodwell, de Nupero 
Schismate Anglicano. See. 3, page 4, 5, London, 1704. 

1 Humanam conantur Ecclesiam facere. — S. Cypr. Epist. LII. ad Ant. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 11 

LETTER II. 

On Unity. 

Sir — I yield to your solicitation, and since you require it, I 
will discuss, successively, the different articles upon which we 
differ ; and in the first place, with your permission, I shall com- 
mence by casting together with you, a general glance upon the 
spectacle that religion presents in your country. Long did I 
witness it with sorrow ; a thousand times did I groan in spirit, 
whilst residing amongst you ; and now, in my state of separation 
from you, I am still equally afflicted with dismay and pity, so 
often as I consider, what you were, and what you are. 

From the establishment of Christianity in your country, to the 
period, when, for the first time, mention was made of a reforma- 
tion, your happy ancestors had known but one faith, one altar, 
and one religion. Bound from without to all the churches of 
the world, they were within themselves strictly united together : 
they resorted to the same temples, and assembled around the 
same altars. Under the direction of the same pastors, they 
heard the same doctrine and participated in the same sacraments. 
They all were brethren, all members of the same body of Jesus 
Christ. The name of a dissenter was not so much as known 
amongst them. The sweetness of harmony, and the peace of 
uniformity reigned in families, in cities, in districts, in the whole 
empire. At the voice of the reformation every thing changed 
its appearance. What do we behold from the time of Elizabeth ? 
Shu hud flattered herself, in the pride of her wisdom, and from 
the grand conceptions of her ministers, that by separating her 
subjects from the Catholic world, she should mould them into her 
reformation, and invariably bend them to her law, and that her 
spiritual supremacy would beoome as extensive as her temporal 
dominion. Aud behold ! in spite of all her efforts, she could 
not draw to^er belief the inhabitants of a single county, no. 
not of a single town or village. Her reformation has ever pro- 



12 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

duced new succeeding sects, and affords no glimpse of hope that 
it will ever reach the term of its lamentable fecundity. From 
it have already sprung the presbyterians, the independents, the 
puritans, the socinians, the quakers, the anabaptists, the moravian 
brethren, the new-jerusalemites, the latitudinarians, the swarms 
of metkodists, &c. Whilst the civil law admirably maintains its 
dominion over all your people without distinction, preserves 
peace and order throughout society, the evangelical law is aban- 
doned to systems, to opinions, nay, even to the fanatacism of any 
individual who chooses to erect himself into an expounder and 
preacher of the gospel, and who possesses talent enough to gain 
a hearing and procure an audience. Everywhere, altar is raised 
against altar ; everywhere, by the side of the established Church 
are to be found rival churches, dissenting chapels, temples 
strangers to one another, domestic meetings, where, at the same 
hours, worship is celebrated with different forms and ceremonies, 
the gospel explained in different ways, and doctrine expounded 
in different and contrary senses. In fine, since the thorough 
change produced by Elizabeth, religion, in your country, presents 
a confused medley of every sect and every form of worship ; a 
perfect chaos of doctrines, in which each one plunges and tosses, 
dogmatizing and declaiming as fancy or feeling directs. Men 
no longer know whom to listen to, what to believe, or what to do. 
All that we have to do, is to ask ourselves, whether our divine 
legislator came to give his Church different forms and appear- 
ances, to be subject to variation according to the caprice, or tast 
of men : to give to his doctrine and dogmas various and opposite 
significations : or rather, whether he has not assigned to his 
Church a fixed constitution, and to his words an appropriate 
meaning. Whether he has not imprinted on the system of his 
revelation, whether taken collectively or in detail, that character 
of simplicity and unity, which is so remarkable in all the works 
of God, and which constitutes their excellence and beauty, omnis 
pyHchritudinis forma unitas. We are now arrived at a question 
so decisively important, that I feel myself bound to spend some 
time in developing the proofs, that, in my opinion, demonstrate 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 13 

the necessity of acknowledging and preserving unity in govern- 
ment and faith. I shall in the first place, consult reason ; for it 
will teach us that the dogma of unity is so conformable with, 
and so analagous to the spirit of revelation, as to appear insepara- 
bly connected with its establishment. I shall then open the 
scriptures, and they will shew us the precept delivered by Jesus 
Christ to his apostles, in the clearest, the most forcible, and the 
most peremptory terms : and, in conclusion, I shall interrogate 
the illustrious ages of the Church, ages so justly revered by 
protestants for purity of doctrine, and they will inform us that 
unity is the life and soul of Christianity, as schism is poison and 
death to it. 

I. Reason of itself can sufficiently conceive that unity must 
attach to the plan and spirit of our revelation. In fact, what 
was the condition of the world with respect to it at the coming 
of our Saviour? You need not be informed. If you except 
the people who preserved the deposit of the sacred truths, all 
the others, being delivered up to the corruption of their hearts 
and the darkness of their understanding, had lost sight of their 
Creator. Incapable of comprehending how one single being 
could preside over all, they had filled the world with imaginary 
gods, produced the most fantastical forms of worship, at one 
time offering their incense and their prayers to the planets that 
roll over our heads, at another prostituting them to the produc- 
tions that spring under our feet, to the vilest animals and the 
most shameful passions : and in this multitude of temples that 
covered the earth, the God who created them had not one single 
altar, unless the one, which Athens had erected to the unknown 
GW. 

Such was the deplorable condition of human nature, when 
there appeared in Judea an extraordinary personage, distinguished 
from nther men by a character peculiar to himself, incomparable 
and divine : announcing to the Jews, that the time fixed for the 
abrogation of their ceremonial law was arrived, and to the 
nations, thai they were all called to the knowledge of the true 
God. From the time that he came down from heaven to intru- 
2 



14 ON THE CIIURCn OF ENGLAND 

duce among mankind a system of doctrine, reason could no 
longer admit that he could be indifferent to the various ways, in 
-which this his system would be understood, or that the most 
opposite interpretations could be ecpially agreeable to him. It 
could not admit that it should enter into the spirit and economy 
of his mission, to replace the multiplied idolatrous societies and 
superstitious worships, by a variety of separate sects, of incohe- 
rent and opposite communions ; it could not admit that it was 
his will there should prevail in his Church, almost as general a 
confusion of ideas, as prevailed under the empire of blinded 
reason, and that there should be no better understanding amongst 
us in the bosom of the true religion, than there was in paganism. 
Where there exists an opposition of dogmas and a contrariety 
of opinions, there necessarily is error : and it would be absurd 
to suppose God indiscriminately favorable to falsehood and truth . 
Reason, on the contrary, tells us, that the God of all truth, in 
communicating himself to man, could reveal but one doctrine, 
and establish but one spiritual government, it being a fact that a 
difference in government produces more or less a difference in 
doctrine. 

Reason tells us, he must have been desirous that his dogmas 
and precepts, whatever they were, should be adopted just as he 
had taught them ; that nothing should be added to, or taken 
from them ; that men should never presume to give them a sig- 
nification different from that, which he himself had assigned 
them. It tells us in fine, that he came to display to the world 
the light of his revelation, to substitute a uniformity of belief in 
place of a variety of superstitions, to unite from north to south, 
from east to west, in one single association, under the yoke of 
the same doctrine and the same spiritual government, so many 
nations widely differing from each other in interests, customs, 
climates, prejudices and language : a design too grand for any 
mortal legislator whatsoever, but which well became him, who 
was entitled to the homage of the universe. 1 

1 "Hear, O ye innumerable nations, all ye men endowed with reason, whether 
Greeks or Barbarians 1 I call to me all the human race, of which I am the Crea- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 15 

One of your own divines 1 has spoken -well on this subject : 
'■ Nor is the importance of unity," says he, " much less in these 
latter days of Christianity, for as much as all divisions in all 
times destroy that beauty and loveliness, which would otherwise 
attract all men's admiration and aifection It is not the sub- 
limity of Christian doctrine, nor the gloriousness of the hopes 
it propounds, that will so recommend it to the opinion and esteem 
of beholders, as when it shall be said : Ecce ut Christiani amant. 
when they shall observe the love, concord, and unanimity amongst 
the professors of it. And the want of this hardens the hearts 
of Jews, and Turks, and Pagans more against it, than all the 
reasons and proofs we can give for it, will soften them, and instead 
of opening their ears and hearts to entertain it, open their mouths 
in contempt and blasphemy against it." On the contrary, the 
proofs of Christianity would easily enter into the heart by the 
most moving and irresistible of all proofs, the perfect union of 
Christians among themselves. Where, in fact, are we to look 
for the cause of this unanimity? How are we to account for 
this union of mind and heart among the innumerable faithful, 
strangers to one another in language, customs, climate, and gov- 
ernment? No human institution could ever have effected so 
great a prodigy ; Jews, Turks, idolaters, all would have felt its 
force ; all would have acknowledged and adored a supernatural 
and divine operation. We may then reasonably conclude, that 
if men's passions had not revolted against the yoke of authority ; 
if restless spirits had not been borne away with the mania of 
dogmatizing, and subtilizing upon mysteries ; if ambitious hypo- 
tor, by the will oftlie Father. Come to me, and be subjected and united to God 
alone and to hi- only Word." Tim.-; does Clement of Alexandria represent Jesus 
Christ, as speaking.in his admonition to the gentiles. And, in another plaee, 
!h i same lather Bays again : "At his circumcision he received tin' name ofiJeaue, 

which signifies salvation of tin people \nd truly he then became the salvation 

of {he people; not of one but of many : yea of all nation.-, and of the whole earth." 
Ilu mil. in ooo. Domini, inter diveraas. 

1 Dr. Goodman in Ids work entitled, •• A Serious and Compassionate Enquiry 
into tli" Causes of the present Neglecl and ContempJ of the Protestant Religion 
and the Church of England." Pages 106, Kit Part 2nd, Chap. 2nd, 3d Edition, 

.London, 1675. 



16 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

crites and proud sectarians had not divided brethren, torn the 
Church and miserably dragged entire nations after them into 
schism and error, the plan of our divine legislator would have 
been gloriously accomplished, infidelity would have disappeared, 
all nations would have been brought over to the Christian reli- 
gion : from every part of the globe the same prayers would be 
offered up to our only and adorable mediator, the world would be 
at the foot of the cross, and heaven-born unity would reign un- 
disturbed throughout the world. 

II. Reason has sufficiently proved that it is not merely expe- 
dient, but necessary, that the economy of Christian revelation 
be inseparable from the most absolute unity. We will, there- 
fore, proceed a step further, and pass on to facts. Is it true 
that Jesus Christ was really desirous that unity should prevail 
in his Church and in his doctrine ? Are we certain that he ac- 
tually taught it as an essential dogma of his law ? Let us open 
the archives that contain it, and first call to mind a principle on 
which protestants and Catholics are agreed : The principle is, 
that every one ought to believe and admit what is clearly 
expressed in the Holy Scripture. Now, therefore, let us see 
whether the dogma of the unity of the Church, both in its gov- 
ernment and its faith, is found to be taught with that degree of 
clearness, which requires our assent, which commands and bears 
away our submission and our belief. 

He, who would understand the plan that our divine legislator 
proposed to himself in coming down upon earth, should collect 
with care whatever the evangelists tell us concerning it in the 
different circumstances of his life. These different passages 
collected together and compared with each other, will prove to 
demonstration the correctness of the views, that unassisted reason 
has already taken of the subject. Our Saviour himself shall 
now open his thoughts, and reveal to us that the end of his 
preaching and of his death, were, 1st, to call to himself all the 
nations of the earth; 2dly, to unite them all together in one 
body, in the same doctrine and sentiments. 

1st, St. Matthew relates that, being struck with the humility 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 17 

of the centurion and with the faith that animated his petition, 
our Lord turned towards those who were following him, and said 
to them : " Amen, I say to you, I have not found so great faith 
in Israel : and I say to you, that many shall come from the east 
and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." l On Mt. Olivet, after having 
foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and before he announced 
that of the world, he said to his disciples: "And this gospel 
of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a tes- 
timony to all nations and then shall the consummation come." 2 
We will, moreover, adduce the words uttered by him in the 
house of Simon during his repast with Lazarus, after he had 
raised him from the grave. Mary came with great piety to pour 
precious ointment on his feet : and Judas having censured this 
affectionate tribute of respect and tenderness as an act of prodi- 
gality, Jesus vouchsafes to justify it and adds : " Amen, I say 
to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole 
world, that also which she hath done, shall be told for a memory 
of her." 3 Who does not discover in these as well as in the 
foregoing words, the intention of the legislator that his law should 
be announced to the world and that all the nations of the earth 
should be called unto it? 

So far, he had satisfied himself with insinuating it on certain 
occasions ; it was reserved for a latter period to point it out more 
expressly. After his resurrection it was that he opened himself 
bo his apostles upon the subject, when he declared to them the 
greatness and the extent of the ministry lie laid upon them. 
" doing, " said he to them, " teach all nations.... teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." * And 
a! his lit appearance, when on the point of returning to heaven, 
he again commands his apostles to execute his intentions: he 
addresses them with these words, the last that have ever been 
h sard from his divine mouth: "You shall receive the power of 
the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses 
into me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria: and even 
'Matt. viiL 11. *mv. 14. 8 xrvi. 13. -'xxviii. It). 



18 ON TilE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to the uttermost parts of the earth." ' Here then, are all nations, 
all people, both those who then inhabited this globe, and those who 
were to inhabit it to the end of time, marked out for the apostolic 
ministry, and from thenceforth invited and called to Jesus Christ. 
2dly, But what then would he do ? Listen, while he informs 
you: " Other sheep I have that are not of this fold." This he 
said after having spoken of those, who already were following 
him, and evidently referring to those who had not, up to that 
time, heard his voice, that is to say, to all the nations of the 
world, to whom he ordered it should afterwards be carried : 
" Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold," (the Gentiles, 
strangers at that time to the fold, into which the Jews alone had 
hitherto entered) " them also I must bring, and they shall bear 
my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." 2 We 
here see the unity of the Church, distinctly represented under 
the figure of one only fold, which contains one only flock, con- 
fided to the care of one only shepherd or pastor. But who is 
this single pastor? Jesus Christ was the pastor on earth, and 
no doubt he continues to be eminently so in heaven, but, in order 
that, after his ascension, the entire flock might always preserve 
a pastor at its head, it was necessary that Jesus Christ should 
substitute a visible shepherd to the end of time, and in fact, we 
learn again from St. John, that at the moment of his ascending 
to his Father, in the presence of his disciples, Jesus Christ con- 
fided to Peter and his successors the administration and govern- 
ment of all who were his, and with a view to make this great 
prerogative better understood by all and incontestably recognized 
in the prince of the apostles, he was pleased to confer it upon 
him by a commission given thrice in succession: "Feed my 
lambs, feed my lambs, feed my sheep." 3 You see there is no 
exception : it is the whole flock, all the sheep who were one day 
to hear his voice and be united in one and the same fold ; the 
whole of the faithful, therefore, are confided to the guardianship 
of one pastor, to the care of Peter, and after him to his successors. 
Previously to this, Jesus Christ had announced the same pre- 
' Acts, i. 8. 2 John, x. 16. 3 John, xxi. 15. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 19 

eminence to the same apostle under another figure, and always 
by shewing that he had but one Church in view, as he was desi- 
rous that all his sheep should be collected into one fold : and this 
above all it behooves us to remark : " Thou art Peter, and upon 
this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it." 1 I beg you to observe these words : he 
speaks but of one only Church, therefore he did not wish to 
establish several; there cannot therefore have been several 
founded by him, but only one for the world, and upon one and 
the same stone, one only foundation. Ah ! how should he ever 
endure division and parties in his Church, who has left us the 
axiom that, ' ' every kingdom divided against itself shall be made 
desolate ; and every city or house divided against itself shall not 
stand." 2 

We see, moreover, his system of unity traced out most clearly 
by St. John. 3 At the report of the resurrection of Lazarus, the 
chief priests and the pharisees take alarm and assemble in coun- 
cil. " What shall we do," say they, " for this man doth many 
miracles ? If we let him alone so, all will believe in him and 
the Romans will come and take away our place and nation." 
Bat one of them, named Caiphas, the high-priest of that year, 
said to them : " You know nothing, neither do you consider that 
it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people 
and fli.it the whole nation perish not." Take notice of the 
reflection, which the beloved disciple of our Master subjoins. 
"And this he spoke not of himself; but being the high-priest 
of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation ; 
and not only for the nation, but to gather together in one the 
children of Cod that were dispersed." Such then was the plan 
of our Saviour and the object of his death: by paying his blood 
as the ransom i'<>r all men, he died to gather together into one 
flock, to unite in one body all the children of Cod, spread over 
the face of the globe, both those who then were living or who 
afterwards would live upon the great continents, and those who 

1 Matt. xvi. 18. n<l. xii. 25. 'John, xi. i. 



20 ON THE CIIURCII OF ENGLAND 

inhabited or would inhabit the islands scattered on the seas. 1 
Your ancestors in fact were called in their turn to the body of 
Jesus Christ : they belonged to it for ages, and would have con- 
tinued still to belong to it, if they had not been unfortunately 
cut off from it by the mortal blow of the reformation, which 
manifestly has destroyed, between you and us, that system of 
unity which our Saviour purposed to cement by his blood. 

Have you ever reflected upon what our Saviour said when he 
told those that were his by what sign they should be recognized 
in all places for his disciples ? He does not wish that men should 
know them, by the austerities of their fasts and abstinences, as 
was the case with the followers of the Baptist, or by the vain 
distinction of their dress or a minute application to external and 
bodily observances ; still less by the infatuation of certain philo- 
sophic systems, like the adepts of the Portico or the Academy. 
What then was to be the distinctive mark of his disciples ? "By 
this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have 
love one for another." 2 And as we cannot recognize the true 
disciples of a God, without wishing to increase their number, all 
who would have seen them would have joined them in crowds ; 
the irresistible charm of fraternal charity would have successively 
drawn whole people, and would gradually and quietly have sub- 
jected the whole world to Jesus Christ. 

Now the principle of a universal and charitable affection most 
certainly exists in unity, as that of a reciprocal estrangement is 
found in schism and separation. As long as we belong to the 
same Church and the same faith, we form but one groat family, 
we feel a sympathy and a love for one another as brethren . But 
should, unfortunately, a separation take place ; mutual complaints, 
accusations, and irritations ensue. Thenceforth we become 
strangers, and too often enemies to each other. Unity alone, 
therefore, can bind and attach nations together, and enters, of 
necessity, into the distinctive and characteristic mark, which 

1 St. John inculcates the same doctrine in these words (Epistle I. ii. 2.) "And 
be is the propitiation for oar sins: ami not ibr ours only, but also for those of the 
'■■ile world." " Jobn, xiii. 33. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 21 

Jesus Christ assigns to his disciples, the cause being essentially 
inseparable from its effect. 

But there still remains something more wonderful and striking. 
You are now to hear our divine Master praying that unity may 
dwell among us all, with words that should touch the heart of 
any one who glories in being one of his, and undoubtedly should 
be sufficient to call to his church all those that have had the 
misfortune to be born out of it. Let us read over again the 
beautiful prayer, which, a little before he delivered himself 
up to the power of his enemies, he addressed to his Father in 
these words : " Holy Father, keep them in thy name, whom thou 
hast given me, that they may be one, as we also are one." ' So 
far he prays for his apostles ; hear now his prayer for all Chris- 
tians in after ages : ' ' And not for them only do I pray, but for 
them also, who through their word shall believe in me ; that 
they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee : that 
they also may be one in us ; that the world may believe that thou 
hast sent me. And the glory, which thou hast given to me, I 
have given to them : that they may be one as we also are one. 
I in them and thou in me : that they may be made perfect in 
one : and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast 
loved them as thou hast loved me." 

Our Saviour here entreats his Father that his apostles, and 
then that those who were one day to believe in their word, as 
well as in the word of those who should succeed them in the 
ministry, that consequently all the faithful who should exist from 
the preaching of the gospel to the consummation of the world, 
should continue strictly united to one another; and that the 
voluntary union of their souls should become an image of the 
natural and essential unity that exists between Him and his 
Father. Tie repeats his earnest pctitiou, that we may be among 
ourselves and in him as inseparably united as he himself is with 
his Father, and that if we cannot equal the divine unity of the 
Father and the Son, we may at least produce some resemblance 

1 John, xvii. This prayer fills the whole chapter, I only cite those words that 
arc to the point. 



22 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of it here upon earth by the unanimity of our sentiments and 
the uniun of our hearts. Such, therefore, was the will of our 
heavenly Master, such the object of his prayer and of his death, 
that we may remain inseparably attached to one another, by all 
the bonds of peace, concord, and charity, in the same Church, 
the same faith, with one heart and mind. There was to be no 
such thing as a rupture, or a separate government in religion, 
no division, no schism : but it was to be all harmony, love and 
absolute and perfect unity. And why all this ? Jesus Christ 
himself tells us, and the more to arrest our attention, inculcates 
the reason of it two separate times. "That the world," says 
he, "may know that thou hast sent me: that the world may 
know that thou hast sent me." And observe how this admirable 
prayer, after commencing with the apostles, then turning to those 
who should be converted at their word, is extended even to 
unbelievers, and thus embraces all mankind. It is then true, 
according to the word of our Master, that the perfect union of all 
his disciples was to present to the world a striking proof of the 
divinity of his mission, and that the beautiful and ravishing 
spectacle of fraternal charity was to attract unbelievers and 
accelerate by their union the propagation of the faith. 1 Can 
there be, for one who glories in the name of a Christian, a more 
pressing inducement to cherish and preserve unity, to return to 
it, to abet, and promote it ? Is there any order more imperative 
than a desire and a request so feelingly expressed by Jesus 
Christ, a wish so ardently conveyed in our behalf to his Father ? 
And since he assures us that he trusts to unity for the success 

1 The progress of religion is retarded, because all Christians do not propound 
the same doctrines. The Jews and Pagans and the unbelievers of our days say, 
that we are not to be believed, because we dilt'er in opinion among ourselves." — 
St. Clem. Alx. ch. vii. strom. No. 8. 

" How can your religion be the true one, since you white men do not all pro- 
fess the same? Agree among yourselves upon this point, and then we will attend 
to you." Extract of a speech addressed, in the name of five nations, by a chief 
of the savages, near Boston, to a missionary, of what sect it is not known, who 
had gone for the purpose of exhorting them to embrace the Christian religion. — 
See this speech in the Philadelphia Gazette, .November, 1817. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 23 

and the glory of bis mission ; let us see whether, with all our 
zeal, we concur to its accomplishment? What then have all 
those been doing, who have since sown divisions among tbe 
brethren ? what have Photius and Cerularius done at Constanti- 
nople ; Luther, in Germany; Calvin, in France; and Elizabeth 
in your own country ? They have taken away from Jesus Christ 
one of the proofs of the divinity of his mission, even that which 
he so ardently desired to establish for the world, when he was 
about to leave it. They have set themselves in opposition to his 
designs and his express wish, they have combated and annihilated 
it. as far as lay in their power. He prayed, " Let them be one, 
that the world may know that thou hast sent me ;" and they said, 
by their actions at least, " let them not be one, that the world 
may not know that Jesus Christ was sent by his Father." God 
forbid, however, that I should attribute to their conduct an 
intention which could never be discovered except, in hearts at 
declared enmity with Jesus Christ ! Undoubtedly they never 
would have preached up or commanded the schism, if they had 
thoroughly comprehended its enormity. 1 Blinded by passions 
and human interests, carried away with the warmth of disputa- 
tion, with the spirit of party, and that false glory which urges 
men to continue in the obstinate defence of a cause they have 
once espoused, they perceived not that their blows were all dis- 
charged upon Jesus Christ himself against his most favorite 
virtue, against the wish nearest his heart, against the most 
sacred of all his precepts, the precept best calculated for extend- 
ing ami propagating through the world the benefit of revelation 
and the fruit of his Bufferings and death. This tiny neither felt 
nor considered. But we who at this day coolly ami deliberately 
peruse the melancholy history of these great divisions; we who 
calmly contemplate the fatal consequences and the anti-christian 
and sacrilegious cause of them, we shall be inexcusable., and, it 

i "When -'■<•(- in religion are numerous fchej are the cause of atheism." — Bacon. 

"'I'll'- dissension thai prevail among ill' 1 multiplied Beets, thai are come foi kh 
from the schools of Lnthcr and Calvin, have been unfortunately bul too favorable 
ti> the birth and , Inlitj ." Dr. /■■■ ttt Consul, on the Prophi cios. 



24 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

may be, more culpable than our blinded ancestors, if we perse- 
vere in their schism, and obstinately persist with full deliberation 
in impugning by our separation, the order and arrangement of 
our Saviour, and concealing that splendid proof of the divinity 
of his mission which he was desirous should be discovered by the 
world, after his death, in the union of his followers. 

Let us go back to the time when Jesus Christ invoked upon 
us the blessing of his Father ; let us represent to ourselves the 
apostles, pressing round their Master, their hearts still burning 
^ith the first participation of his body, which they had just re- 
ceived at the institution of the Eucharist, yet in consternation at 
the announcement of the treachery which one or the other of 
them was soon to be guilty of, but afterwards consoled by expres- 
sions of kindness, and the familiar conversation, which he was 
pleased to prolong after Judas had abruptly left the assembly ; 
let us represent to ourselves, I say, the apostles, with their eyes 
fixed upon their Master, when all at once, raising to heaven his 
hands, and his celestial countenance, which then was lit up more 
than ever, with the fire of prayer, and a ray of the divinity, he 
solemnly pronounced that sublime invocation, some passages of 
which I have quoted above. How must their attention and their 
hearts have been suspended in silence, in rapture, and ecstatic 
delight ! How deep must have been the impression made upon 
their souls by these words proceeding from his divine mouth : 
" Holy Father, keep them in thy name, whom thou hast given 

me, that they may be one, as we also are one And not for 

them only do I pray, but for them also, who through their word 
shall believe in me ; that they may all be one, as thou, Father 
in me and I in thee ; that they also may be one in us, that the 
world may believe that thou hast sent me." Such words could 
never be effaced from their recollection ; never could the apostles 
have lost sight of the pathetic and enrapturing scene where they 
had heard them. A thousand times must they have repeated 
them in the course of their ministry to the rising Churches ; a 
thousand times must they have prepared the faithful against 
divisions and schisms, and have recommended them to hold inva- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 25 

riably the same language and the same faith, and to remain 
inseparably united iu oue body and one flock. It would be im- 
possible to doubt of this, should they even have left us no written 
document on the subject. But it was the will of providence, 
that, upon this fundamental article of unity, we should be sup- 
plied with a guarantee of the common doctrine of all the apostles : 
we find it in the Epistle that St. Jude addressed to all the Chris- 
tians then in the world. "My dearly beloved," says he, "be 
mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the 
apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ ; who told you that in the last 
time there should come mockers, walking according to their own 
desires in ungodliness : these are they, who separate themselves, 
Bcnsual men, having not the spirit." l We are then assured by 
the testimony of an apostle, that all the others, wherever they 
went, every where insisted upon the necessity of forming but one 
body, and have carefully cautioned the faithful against false 
doctors, who might desire to separate and form a distinct sect. 
This passage is very remarkable : it is the only one of the New 
Testament, which attributes to all the apostles any point of doc- 
trine whatsoever as universally preached by them. As it con- 
tains the dogma that serves for the defence and the rampart of 
f.ll others, the Holy Spirit no doubt intended to signify to us 
that all the apostles had taken particular pains to inculcate it, 
in order that we might feel the obligation of keeping ourselves 
more interested in its preservation. 

Without fatiguing you any more with my argumentation, I 
will hastily and without much premeditation throw before you 
the various passages that the New Testament presents us on this 

Bubject. " And in fine, be you all of one mind being lovers 

of the brotherhood."* "Take heed to yourselves," said St. 
Paul to the reunited clergy of Miletus and Ephcsus, "and to 
the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, 
to rule the Church of (Jod which ho hath purchased with his 
blood. I know that after my departure ravenous wolves will 
enter in among you, not sparing the flock. And of your own 
1 St. Jade, i. 17, is, 10. »i Peter, iii. 8. 



26 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

selves shall arise men speaking perverse things to draw away 
disciples after them." ' You see that the congregations of Chris- 
tians spread in different places, compose but one church, which 
Jesus Christ purchased with his blood. You shall now see the 
same doctrine in the epistle to the Romans, in which St. Paul 
inculcates first the unity of the body, and then that of doctrine. 
"So we being many are one body in Christ. 2 .... Being of one 

mind, one towards another. 3 Now the God of patience and of 

comfort grant to you to be of one mind one towards another, 
according to Jesus Christ ; that with one mind and one mouth 
you may glorify God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 
Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them, who make dissen- 
sions and offences contrary to the doctrine, which you have learned 
and to avoid them. 5 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name 
of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and 
that there be no schisms amongst you ; but that you be perfect 
in the same mind, and in the same judgment. For it hath been 

signified unto me that there are contentions among you Is 

Christ divided ?" 6 Alas ! how often would he have had in after 
times to repeat this question. And why has it not always been 
better understood? " God is not the God of dissension, but of 
peace, as also I teach in all the churches of the saints." 7 And 
as all the apostles taught with St. Paul, because their doctrine 
was everywhere the same, and because upon this article St. Jude 
expressly tells us so. We must not omit the 12th chapter of the 
same Epistle, which should be quoted almost entire. "In one 
spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gen- 
tiles, whether bond or free ; and in one spirit we have all been 
made to drink. For the body also is not one member but many : 

Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member. 8 

For the rest, my brethren, rejoice, be perfect, take exhortation, 
be of one mind, have peace ; and the God of peace and of love 
shall be with you. 9 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, 
"vhich are fornication, uncleanness, ... enmities, contentions, ... 

• Acts, xx. 28, 29, 30. 2 Rom. xii. 5. 3 Ibid. 16. <lbid. xv. 5. sjbid. xvi. 
17. « 1 Cor. i. 10. ' Ibid. xiv. 33. 8 ibid. xii. 13, 14, 27. » 2 Cor. xiii. 11. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 27 

quarrels, dissensions, sects Of the which I foretell you as I 

Lave foretold you that they who do such things shall not obtain 
the kingdom of heaven." ' I leave you to your reflections upon 
this awful oracle. 

Hear how the apostle addresses you as formerly he addressed 
the Ephesians. "But now in Christ Jesus, you who sometime 

were afar off, are made nigh, by the blood of Christ Now 

therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners ; but you are 
fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, built 
upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building, 
being framed together, groweth up into a holy temple in the 
Lord. In whom you also are built together into a habitation of 
God in the Spirit." 2 Thus all the inhabitants of the earth, both 
those who had been blessed with hearing our Saviour, and those 
whom his gospel was one day to reach, should they even be at 
the extremities of the globe, like your ancestors in their cele- 
brated island, all nations have been called to compose one only 
Church, to become by their concord and union, so many com- 
ponent parts of tho grand and majestic edifice, which he came 
to erect for the world. For ages after, your ancestors were its 
ornament — why must they go out from it to shut themselves up 
in a temple of modern construction, built apart and separate, by 
a royal, it is true, but a human and perishable power, whereas 
the ancient temple having Jesus Christ for its foundation and its 
architect, is a divine and immortal structure ! Without doubt, 
the most fatal misfortune, after that of withdrawing from it, is 
the not returning to it again. 

"I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you 
walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called, with all 

humility and mildness careful to preserve the unity of the 

spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one spirit; as you 
are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, 
one baptism -<>nc God and Father of all." 3 Here is unity evi- 
dently presented in every shape and point of view, in govern- 
1 OaL iv. 19, 20, 21. *Gal. ii. 20. "»Ephes. iv. 1. 



28 ON THE CIirRCII OF ENGLAND 

ment as well as in faith, in the body of the Church as well as in 
the profession of doctrine. The governments of the earth may 
vary according to the will of nations and the vicissitudes of life ; 
but the government of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, and 
purchased by his blood, must needs be one, as are its hopes, its 
Mptism, its Lord, and its God. "Only let your conversation 
be worthy of the Gospel of Christ ; that whether I come and see 
you, or being absent may hear of you, that you stand fast in one 
spirit, with one mind, laboring together for the faith of the gos- 
pel :'" And not fighting against one another, and tearing one 
another to pieces, as the sectaries have at all times exhorted their 
followers, and unfortunately have too well succeeded. " Fulfil 
ye my joy, that you be of one mind having the same charity, 
being of one accord, agreeing in sentiment. Let nothing be 
done through contention, neither by vain glory 2 Neverthe- 
less whereunto we are come, that we be of the same mind, let us 

also continue in the same rule. 3 And let the peace of Christ 

rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body.* 

But avoid foolish questions....... and contentions, and 

strivings about the law. A man that is a heretic after the first 
and second admonition avoid, knowing that he that is such a one 
is subverted and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment.* 
Be not led away with various and strange doctrines." 6 Thus did 
the indefatigable apostle of nations preach to the world. He 
still lives, breathes, and speaks in his epistles ; his preaching, 
beginning with the Church, will pass on with it to the end of 
time. He never ceased, nor does he yet cease to recall to unity 
that crowd of societies gone astray for so many ages, to whom, 
nevertheless, is due the glory of having preserved Christianity 
in Africa, and carried it to the extremities of Asia, I mean the 
Nestorians and Eutychians ; he still calls upon the numerous 
people of the Greek Church, so nearly resembling our own ; and 
our brethren, the Lutherans, Calvinists, and English, separated 
in more modern times; he exhorts them, he conjures them all 

•Philip, i. 27. 2 lbid. ii. 2. ^ib. iii. 16. <Colos3. iii- 15. 5 Titus, iii. 9. 
« Heb. xiii. 9. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 29 

in a body, and you, Sir, in particular, who have just seen and 
read his words. He again speaks to you and to all, in words to 
the following effect: — " Heretics or schismatics, slaves or free, 
to whatever climate or nation you belong, you have all been 
baptized to be one body and one Church. Return then to it, 
from which a secession was never lawful ; enter her bosom which 
your ancestors unfortunately left from motives, which you can 
no longer avow, and upon pretexts, the fallacy of which are at 
the present day so well known to every enlightened and impar- 
tial mind. Fulfil our joy : let us live together with perfect un- 
derstanding and reciprocal love, having but one heart and one 
mind, and then the peace of Jesus Christ, to which we have all 
been called, as members of one body, will reign in our hearts." 

in. It cannot be doubted that the primitive Christians must 
have had much more lively ideas of unity than those that we recol- 
lect from the New Testamemt, since they had it as well as we in 
their hands, and moreover possessed the additional advantage of 
having heard this doctrine developed by the apostles in their 
discourses and daily conversations. The first bishops were formed 
in the school of their inspired masters, and received consecration 
at their hands. This immediate institution has gained them 
from posterity the honorable title of apostolic. There is good 
reason for supposing that they composed many works : unfortun- 
ately but few have como down to us. 1 

The .most ancient are the epistles of Saint Clement, who is 
culled by the fathers, sometimes apostolic, sometimes apostle, 
sometimes almost apostle. He, as well as Titus and Timothy 
had accompanied St. Paul in his travels : he followed him to 
Home, of which he was bishop, having succeeded Saint Peter, 
after Linus and Cletus. We will now consider the circumstances 
in which he wrote his first epistle : A warm dispute had just 
arisen in Corinth, something similar to what happened in the 
time of St. Paul. A party had been formed against certain 
priests of irreproachable character, and had been audacious 
enough to think of deposing them. Fortunatus immediately 
1 Tradition "i Hi" Bret ages. 



30 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

leaves Corinth, arrives at Rome with information of the disturb- 
ance. Clement was then in the chair of Peter. He wrote to 
the Corinthians that admirable epistle, which for a long time was 
read in the oriental churches together with the canonical scrip- 
tures. He begins by lamenting over, " that impious and detesta- 
ble division," (these are his words) "which has just appeared 
among them." He recalls them "to their former piety, to the 
time when, full of humility and submission, they were as inca- 
pable of inflicting an injury as of resenting it. Then (adds he), 
every kind of schism was an abomination in your eyes." He 
concludes by telling them that he is in haste to send Fortunatus 
back to them, "to whom (says he), we join four deputies : Send 
them back as speedily as possible in peace, that we may be quickly 
informed of the return of union and peace among you, for which 
we pray without ceasing : and that we may be enabled to rejoice 
at the re-establishment of good order amongst our brethren at 
Corinth." How sacred must unity have been considered in this 
happy age, when at the first appearance of division, the ancient 
fellow-laborer of Saint Paul, the venerable Fortunatus, to stop 
its progress, exposes himself to the dangers of a long voyage 
and betakes himself to Rome to solicit the successor of St. Peter 
to interpose his authority. 1 What would this apostolic Pontiff 
have said of the great defections of the East, of Germany, and 
England, since, on the first rumor of a dispute arising in a small 
portion of the flock in a single town, he immediately takes alarm, 
treats this disturbance as an impious and detestable division and 
nothing less than an abominable schism, and employs the au- 
thority of his see and his paternal solicitations to bring back the 
Corinthians to peace and concord ? 

Ignatius, the disciple of St. Peter and St. John, being trans- 
ported from Autioch, of which he was the third bishop, to Rome, 
where he was expecting the crown of martyrdom, under Trajan, 
in 107, in his passage by Smyrna, saw Polycarp, who kissed his 
chains: he visited, on his journey, many other churches, and 
wrote to them seven epistles, which are the most precious monu- 

1 Observe, 1 pray, this early recourse to the chair of Peter in the first ages. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 61 

ments of the faith and discipline of the primitive church. His 
epistle to the Christians of Smyrna commences as follows: "I 
give thanks to Jesus Christ our God, for that he hath filled you 
with so great wisdom : for I know that you are fully per- 
suaded that being the Son of God he was truly born of a 

virgin, by the will and the power of the Father, that he 

was truly crucified for us in his own flesh, under Pontius Pilate 
and Herod the tetrarch ; that with his blood he has produced us 
as the fruits of his divine and blessed passion ; and that, by his 
resurrection, he has raised to the end of ages, the standard of 
the cross for the saints and faithful, both Jews and Gentiles, 
that we may be all united in the body of his Church." 

He afterwards proceeds : " Avoid schisms and discords, which 
are the source of all evils. Follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ 
his Father, and the college of priests as the apostles. Let no 
one presume to undertake any thing in the Church, without the 
bishop." And yet a female in your country, was bold enough 
to drive all the bishops from their sees, in order the more easily 
to accomplish her new plan of a Church ! — In his letter to Poly- 
carp, ""Watch most carefully," says he, " for the preservation 
of union and concord, which are the first of all blessings." 
Therefore the first of all miseries are schism and division. 
Further on in the same letter, addressing the faithful, he says; 
"Hear your bishops, that God may hear you. With what joy 
would I give my life for those who submit to the bishop, the 
priests and the deacons ! Oh ! that I may be one day united with 
tlniu in the Lord!" And in his epistle to the Philadclphians : 
" Nut that I have found schism among you, but I wish to for- 
tify you against it as the children of God." He does not wait 
till schism has appeared: he stifles it in the birth and cuts it 
off in the bud. "All those, who are of Christ, hold with their 
bishops, but those who separate to embrace the communion of 
accursed men, shall be cut off and condemned together with 
them." And to the Ephesians : Whoever (says he) separates 
from th'' bishop and agrees not with the first-born of the Church, 
is a wolf in sheep's clothing. My dearly beloved, labor to re 



32 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

main united to the bishop, the priests and the deacons. He who 
obeys them, obeys Christ, by whom they were established: he 
who revolts against them, revolts also against Jesus." What, 
I pray, would he have said of those who have since revolted 
against the decision of general councils, and who, in contempt 
of all the bishops of the world, have joined themselves to a few 
monks or refractory priests, or to an assemblage of laics ? 

I pass on now to Polycarp, 1 the celebrated bishop of Smyrna, 
who also is called apostolical, and no less illustrious than St. 
Ignatius. I recommend you to read the account of this bishop's 
martyrdom in the excellent relation of it given by the faithful 
of Smyrna to the Churches at Pontus. We have an epistle of 
his to the Philippians, in which he testified the utmost horror of 
those who were teaching heterodox opinions. Now heresy at- 
tacks at once both unity of doctrine, which it corrupts by its 
errors, and unity of government from which it withdraws itself, 
through an obstinate adherence to its own opinion. "Follow 
the example of our Saviour," says Polycarp, " continue firm in 
faith, unchangeable in doctrine, loving one another." At the 
age of ninety and upwards, they saw him leave them to go to 
Rome for the purpose of conferring with Pope Anicetus upon 
articles of pure discipline ; the point above all in agitation being 
the celebration of Easter, which the Asiatics, as well as the Jews, 
solemnized on the fourteenth day of the equinoctial moon, and 
the Western Church on the Sunday following the fourteenth. 
His negociation had the desired effect. It was agreed that the 
Eastern and Western Churches should follow their customs, with- 
out breaking the ties of communion and charity. 2 It was during 
his stay in Rome, that meeting Marcion in the street and wish- 
ing to avoid him, that heretic said, "Do you not know me, 
Polycarp? — Yes, without doubt," replied Polycarp, "I know 
you to be the first-born of the devil." He could not contain 

1 IT' suffered martyrdom at Smyrna in the year 1GG, being upwards of a hun- 
dred years of age. liainart, Act. Martyr. 'Another example of recourse being 
had to the chair of St. Peter. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 33 

his virtuous indignation against those, who employed themselves 
in perverting and sowing divisions among Christians. 

Justin, 1 who renounced the Platonic philosophy, to embrace 
Christianity, which he defended by his Apologies and sealed with 
his blood, tells us that the Church is confined to one only com- 
munion, from which heretics are excluded, "There have been, 
says he, and still are individuals, who sheltering themselves 
under the name of Christians, have taught the world dogmas 
contrary to God, impieties and blasphemies. With them we 
have no communion, we regard them as the enemies of God, 
impious and wicked." 2 

Irenaeus, 3 the illustrious bishop of Lyons, a disciple of Poly- 
carp, and, like his master, a martyr, wrote to Florinus, who had 
himself often seen Polycarp, and who was beginning to dissem- 
inate certain heresies : ' ' You have not been so instructed by 
the bishops who preceded you. I could still shew you the place 
where the blessed Polycarp sat to preach the word of God. I 
remember his sanctified demeanor and the majesty of his deport- 
ment. Mcthinks I hear him still recounting how he had con- 
versed with John and many others, who had seen Jesus Christ, 
and what words he had heard from their mouths ; and I can as- 
sure you, before God, that if that holy bishop had heard of such 
errors as yours, he would immediately have stopped his ears, 
and exclaimed as he was accustomed ; good God, to what times 
hast thou preserved me, that I hear such things! And imme- 
diately he would have retired." 4 In his learned work upon 
heresies, speaking schismatics, he says : " God will judge those, 
who shall occasion schisms ; cruel men who have no love for him, 
and who, preferring their own private advantage to the unity of 
of the Church, not hesitating, for the most frivolous reasons, to 
divide and tear in pieces the most glorious body of Jesus Christ, 
and who would willingly give him up to death, were it in their 

power But those who separate and divide (ho unity of the 

Church shall be visited by the chastisement of Jeroboam." 5 

1 Martyred in 107. * DiaJ : with Tryphon. 3 Bom in Asia Minor, in 120— mar- 
tyred at Lyons in 203. « Eosub. Hist" Book V. 6 Book IV. 



61 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Dionysius, of Alexandria, in his letter to Novatus, 1 who had 
just effected a schism in Rome, where he had got Novatian con- 
secrated bishop, in opposition to the legitimate Pope, Cornelius, 
said to him "If it is true, as you assert, that you repent of 
having thus gone astray, shew us your repentance by a prompt 
and voluntary return. For every thing should be endured, 
rather than divide the Church of God. It would be as glorious 
to die a martyr to save the Church from a schism and separation, 
as it would be to die for not worshipping the gods, and in my 
opinion much more so ; for in the latter case we become martyrs 
for our own soul alone, in the former for the whole Church. If 
then you can by friendly pursuasion, or by firmness of conduct, 
bring back your brethren to unity, that good work will be of 
greater importance than your fault ; the latter will no longer be 
laid to your charge, bat the former will redound to your praise. 
But if they refuse to follow you and imitate your return, save, 
save at least you own soul. May prosperity always attend you, 
and the peace of the Lord again take possession of your heart." 
To quote with justice the great bishop of Carthage, 2 many of 
liis letters, and the entire book he composed upon unity, should 
be brought forward ; I shall only give you some extracts. The 
following is a passage become proverbial in tradition : " He can- 
not have God for his Father, who does not acknowledge the 
Church for his mother. Do the schismatics then imagine that 
Jesus Christ will be with them in their assemblies, whereas they 
assemble out of the Church ! Let them know, that should they 
even give their lives to confess the name of Christ, they never 
would efface, by their blood, the stain of schism, because the 
crime of discord is beyond all expiation. He who is not in the 
Church can never be a martyr." 3 He afterwards shews the 
enormity of the crime by the terrible punishment of the first 
schismatics Core, Dathan, and Abiron, and two hundred and 
fifty of their accomplices : The earth opened under their feet, 
a nil swallowed them down alive as they stood, and sucked them 
into its burning entrails." 

1 In 232, Eus. Hist. Book VI. « Cyp. mart. 258. 3 Book on Unity. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 35 

Hilary, 1 bishop of Poitiers, expressed himself thus upon unity: 
" Although there is but one Church in the world, yet every town 
has its Church, and all together form but one Church, although 
there are many in number : because being many in number, 
there is still but one." 

Optatus of Milevum, 8 produces the same example to shew that 
the crime of schism is above that of parricide and idolatry. He 
observes that Cain was not punished with death, that the Nini- 
vites obtained time to find favor by repentance ; but no sooner 
did Core, Dathan and Abiron begin to divide the people, than : 
"God," said he, "sends a devouring famine upon the land, 
which immediately opens its tremendous jaws, greedily swallows 
them down and closes upon its prey. These miserable creatures 
more properly buried than dead, fall into the abyss of hell. 
What will you say to this, you who foment schism, and have the 
audacity to defend it?" 

"Nothing," says St. Chrysostom, 3 "so much provokes the 
anger of God, as to divide his Church. Whatever good works 
we might have done, we should not on that account escape pun- 
ishment for having broken the communion of the Church, and 
divided the body of Jesus Christ." 4 

You are now going to read, probably not without trembling, 
in what manner St. Augustine 5 spoke of schism. ' ' The sacrilege 
of schism, the crime, the sacrilege full of cruelty: the sovereignly 
atrocious crime of schism : the sacrilege of schism which sur- 
passes all crimes. Whoever separates an individual and draws 
him off to any party whatsoever, is thereby convicted of being 
the son of the devil and a murderer." — "The Donatists" says 
he moreover, " do indeed cure those whom they redeem by bap- 
tism from idolatry, but it is by inflicting upon them the more 
f;it;il wound of schism. Idolaters have been sometimes exter- 
minated by the -word of the Lord; but, asfor schismatics, the 
earth has swallowed them alive into its bosom. 8 — The schismatic 



1 Upon Psalm riv. ffe died in 367. 


*Died in 884. 


»Died in 407. <Hom 


on the Ep. to the Epheaiana. > Died 


in 430. Ptutbm 


■Book 1. against tin 


Donatiate. 







36 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

may shed his blood, but he can never obtain a crown. Out of 
the Church, and after bursting the bands of charity and unity, 
you have nothing to expect but eternal punishment, even should 
you deliver up your body to the flames for the name of Christ.'" 1 

Now, Sir, in perusing the reflections that I have laid open 
before you on the plan of God's revelation, and on the text of 
Scripture, perhaps you may have imagined that I have carried 
things to exaggeration. Have I said too much ? You have just 
heard some of the fathers, who after the apostles, till the fifth 
age, have thrown most light upon the world. How did they 
cherish union ! How alarmed were they at any thing that might 
tend to wound it ! What zeal in applying an immediate remedy ! 
"What a horror of schism ! They have assigned it its place at 
the head of all crimes, looking upon it as the most fatal of all 
prevarications. They understood better than we the spirit of 
Christianity, and discovered more clearly the noble views of our 
divine Legislator. Oh ! if these views had been as seriously 
considered and as thoroughly felt by all Christians, if the neces- 
sary attention and obedience had always been paid to the pre- 
cepts of Scripture and to the doctrine of the fathers, the sectarian 
would never have dreamed of making a party and of dividing 
the Church, or, if he had undertaken it, he would have found 
himself forsaken by the people. Wo to us, whom the vile in- 
terest of the earth have so often turned from the interests of 
heaven ! Wo to us who are assailed by ignorance and blinded by 
passion ! But when ignorance, and passion and interest have 
ceased to blind us, and when truth shews itself to us in full 
splendor, a thousand times wo to us, if we persist in the separa- 
tion, after having acknowledged its revolting and anti-christian 
principle, and the frightful consequences that ensue from it. 

It would have been easy for me to lengthen these quotations, 
by adding what has been written upon this subject, during the 
first five ages by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, 
Fcrmilian of Cesarea, Theophilus of Antioch, Lactantius, Euse- 
bius, Ambrose, &c, and after so many illustrious testimonies, 
1 Ep. to Donatus. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 37 

the decisions of the bishops united in a body in the particular 
councils of Elvira, in 305; of Aries, in 314; of Gaugres, to- 
wards 360; of Saragossa, 318; of Carthage, 398; of Turin, 
399 ; of Toledo, 400 ; of Constantinople, 381 ; of Ephesus, 431 ; 
of Chalcedon, 451. I prefer calling your attention to authori- 
ties, which, for being more modern, will not on that account, 
perhaps, appear less strong in your eyes, and no doubt will as- 
tonish you the more. 

The confession of Augsburgh (Art. 7) : ' We teach that this 
one holy Church will exist always. For true unity of the Church, 
it suffices to agree in the doctrine of the gospel and the adminis- 
tration of the sacraments, as St. Paul said, one faith, one bap- 
tism, one God, the Father of all.' 

The Catechism of Geneva (Sunday XVI), teaches that, 'No 
one can obtain the pardon of his sins, unless he be first incorpo- 
rated in the people of God, and persevere in the communion of 
the body of Christ : — Thus therefore there would be nothing but 

damnation and death for him who is out of the Church Yes, 

without doubt, all those who separate from the communion of 
the faithful, to form a separate sect, must never expect salvation 
as long as they remain in that state of separation.' 

The Helvetian Confession (Art. 12), speaking of the assem- 
blies held by the faithful in all times since the apostles, adds : 
' All those who despise them and separate from them despise the 
true religion, and should be urged by the pastors and godly 
magistrates not to persist obstinately in their separation.' 

The Galliean Confession (Art. 16) : ' We believe that no one 
is permitted to withdraw from the assemblies of worship, but 

that all ought to maintain the unity of the Church ; and that 

vhoevev strays from it, resists the order of God.' 

The 18th Article of the English convocation, 1562, teaches 
tin' same dootrine almost in the same terms. 

The Scotch confession (Art. 27) ; ' We firmly believe that tin; 

Church is one We utterly detest the blasphemies of those 

who pretend that all men, by following equity and justice, what- 



38 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

ever religion they otherwise profess, shall be saved. For with- 
out Christ, there is neither life nor Salvation.' 

The Belgic confession : ' We believe and confess one only 

Catholic Church Whoever forsakes this true Church, 

manifestly revolts against the ordinances of God.' 

The Saxon confession (Art. 12) ; ' It is a great consolation 
for us to know that there are no inheritors of eternal life except 
in the assembly of the elect, according to that, whom he has 
predestinated, them has he called.' 

The Bohemian confession (Art 8) ; ' We have been taught 

that all ought to keep the unity of the Church ; that no one 

should introduce sects or excite sedition, but that every one 
should prove himself a true member of the Church in the bond 
of peace and in unanimity of sentiment.' How strange and 
deplorable was the blindness of these men, not to have known 
how to apply these principles to the time that preceded the preach- 
ing of Luther ! What was so true, when they drew up their 
confessions of faith, was equally so, no doubt, at that time. 

Even Calvin teaches ; ' that to forsake the Church is to deny 
Jesus Christ : that we must be greatly upon our guard against 
so criminal a separation ; that a more atrocious crime can- 
not be imagined, than that of violating, by a perfidious sacrilege, 
the covenant which the only Son of God has deigned to contract 
with us.' ' Unhappy man ! What a sentence has escaped his 
mouth. He will for ever be his own condemnation. 

In 1080, Henchman, bishop of London, wishing to shew the 
dissenters the necessity of ending their schism, thought he should 
more effectually accomplish his object, if the Calvinistic minis- 
ters from without would join their voices with his : he wrote to 
M. Claude and to M. de l'Angle, ministers of Charenton, and 
to M. le Mayne, professor of divinity at Leydon : they all three 
entered into his views and gave him their opinion in writing. 
De l'Angle sets forth; ' that all those, who, from hatred to the 
episcopacy, forsake the established Church were guilty of a very 
great crime; for schism (said he), is the most terrible calamity 
' Inst, book IV. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 39 

that can befall the Church.' ' Claude exhorts the English dis- 
senters to consider, ' whether their system is not in direct contra- 
diction to the spirit of Christianity, which is a spirit of union, 
of social and fraternal intercourse, and never a spirit of division. 

My Lord (continues he), I have not the least scruple in 

having recourse to violent remedies against the procedure of 
those who form a separate party, avoid the assemblies of the 
faithful, and withdraw themselves from your authority. Such 
conduct evidently amounts to a positive schism, a crime detesta- 
ble in itself and abominable before God and man ; those who 
incur its guilt, either by being its first promoters, or the suppor- 
ters of it in others, must expect to render a terrible account at 
the great day of judgment.' And yet, neither Claude, nor de 
1' Angle, nor Henchman, had any notion of applying to them- 
selves and their predecessors that well-founded threat, they so 
emphatically held out against the Calvinists of England ! 

I have under my eye many more passages in which Melanc- 
thon, Peter Martyr, Gerhard, du Plessis, &c, and before them 
John IIuss, teach the same doctrine. I turn them aside, to bring 
before you some of the most distinguished divines of your own 
Church. James I. the second supreme governor in spirituals, 
and his theologian, Casaubon. in their reply to the Cardinal du 
l'erron, acknowledge in plain terms, 'that there is no hope for 
salvation for those, who are separated from the Catholic Church 
or from its communion.' ' Touching the sin of dividing the 
Church,' says Dr. Goodman, 2 that it is of the deepest dye and 
greatest guilt, I suppose we shall easily agree ; for indeed no 
body can well doubt of that, who considers what care cur Sa- 
viour took to prevent it, what pains he took with his apostles 
that they might be thoroughly instructed and not to differ in the 
delivery of his mind to the world, and with what extraordinary 
Btdor he prayed for them upon this very account. John 17, 11. 

> Collier's Ecd. Hist. vaL 1 1, p. B99 and 000. Folio, edition. 2 A Serious and 
Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the present Neglect and Contempt of 
the Protestant Religion :m<l ('lunch of England. Pago 106-7, Part II. chap. 
2nd. 3rd. Edition, Loudon, 1675. 



40 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

And the Apostles themselves answered their master's care with 
their own diligence and circumspection. He that observes how 
industrious they were to resist all beginnings of schism in every 
Church, to heal all breaches, and to take away all occasions of 
divisions, to unite all hearts and reconcile all minds ; How they 
taught people to detest this distemper as the bane of Christianity, 
charging them to use the greatest caution against it, to mark and 
avoid all those men, that inclined that way, as persons of a con- 
tagious breath and infectious society : What odious names they 
give it, as Carnality, the v:or7c of the flesh and of the devil: 
He, I say, that observes all this, cannot but be apprehensive 
of the greatness of this sin. But he that shall trace the sense 
of the Church a little farther, will find the Primitive Christians 
having it in such detestation, that they thought it equal to the 
most notorious Idolatry, Murder and Sacrilege.' This writer 
had deeply studied the sacred volume, and had caught the spirit 
of primitive tradition. Oh that the Parliament of 1558 had 
made the same salutary observations, and that your fellow-coun- 
trymen had as deeply felt their force ! 

Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, expresses himself with a 
tone of confidence and triumph becoming this subject. ' I will 
challenge all the world to shew me any one thing more earnestly 
enjoyn'd and frequently recommended, than the preservation of 
Unity among Christians, and then if without an Unity of gov- 
ernment, no other could be possibly preserv'd as our author 
(Thorndyke) has proved from common sense and common expe- 
rience, that must be the thing principally commanded by all 
these injunctions And thus our Saviour having insti- 
tuted the Society of his Church and established Governors in it, 
when he enjoyns them to be careful to preserve Unity, no man 
can be so dull as not to understand, that he thereby requires 
them to make use of all means of obtaining it, but especially 
such as are necessary to its preservation in all Societies. And 
therefore whether this Unity of Government be enjoyn'd in ex- 
press words in Scripture, I will not concern myself to enquire, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 41 

because 'tis as clear there to all men of common sense, as if it 
were so enjoyn'd, and that is enough." ' 

Such is the language of the enlightened men of your Church, 
of the most renowned protestant theologians, of the confessions 
of faith published at Geneva, in Switzerland, in France, in 
Scotland and in England ; it is the language of the fathers whom 
I have cited above, and of the most ancient councils ; in fine, 
it is the language of all apostolical tradition. What then is this 
great dogma so loudly proclaimed, both by those who have 
always supported it, and those also who have violated it ? What 
strength must there be in its proofs, to make itself felt and known 
even in the bosom of schism and heresy, to have subdued its 
very enemies, and after the furious attacks so openly sustained 
from them, to have constrained them to pay homage to it, and 
by so doing, to place their principles and their conduct in so 
evident a contradiction as to be manifested to the eyes of the 
whole, world! 2 But in theory at least, and on the question of 
right, which is the point immediately in agitation, all parties are 
agreed ; the differences of communion disappear ; Lutherans, 
Calvinist, English, Scotch, the Greek and Latin Churches, the 
faith of all Christian ages, the doctrine of the apostles, the 
pressing and frequently repeated injunctions of our divine legis- 
lator ; all these, and even our feeble reason itself, unite in at- 
testing the necessity of preserving unity in the Church and in 
belief, and agree in placing the dogma of Unity at the head of 
the evangelical precepts, and schism at the head of all human 
prevarications. 3 

•Religion and Loyalty, by Samuel Parker, D. D. Archdeacon of Canterbury. 
156-6. Printed London 1684. a See Appendix. ^ 

J If Catholics taught that salvation might be attained out of the true and only 
Church of Christ, their enemies would not have failed to place them in manifest 
opposition to script ure, the fathers, the councils, to the reformers themselves, 
I" ilr- confessions of faith of the reformed of France, Germany, Switzerland, the 
Low-Countries, Scotland, England, &e. They would not have failed, and assur- 
edly with reason, to shew that of all Christians they are the only ones who have 
the boldness to place salvation onl of the boundaries fixed by the divine Legislator. 
But. when they agree with all the protestant societies upon this article, is it not 
veiy strange that protestants fall furiously upon them for it as a crime? and yet 



42 ON THE. CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

After having endeavored to lay before your eyes, at one view, 
the different proofs that establish this incontestable dogma, I 

the journals, pamphlets, sermons and treatises, which swarm in England, Switz- 
erland, and France, are unceasingly exciting against them the hatred of their 
fellow-countrymen, as if Catholics alone restricted salvation to the true Church, 
and as if they did not hold this doctrine in common with the other Christian so- 
cieties. What are we to think of such conduct ? Let it not be attributed either to 
base perfidiousness or to hatred ; let us rather impute it to ignorance, a shameful 
and fatal stain, it is true, and yet necessarily inherent in an age become too in- 
different to the concerns of religion to instruct itself, and too fond of talking, not 
to discourse upon it, as if it was thoroughly versed in the subject. 

Errors do not constitute heresy ; but only that perversity which induces men 
to remain obstinately attached to them. Hence the expression of St. Augustine : 
•■ I may err, but I will never be a heretic."* Catholics do not hesitate to join this 
great light of the Church in making a complete distinction between those who 
established a heresy, and those who, afterwards being born in its bosom, have in- 
voluntarily imbibed error with their mother's milk. They regard the former as 
rebels to the divine authority of the Church; the latter as being without any bit- 
terness against her and for the most part without obstinacy against her decrees 
of which they even know nothing. She believes that these latter, although they 
belong not to the body, yet belong to the soul of the Church. They think, with the 
same doctor, that the Church produces for itself children, both from her own 
womb, and from that of her servants, that is to say, from foreign communions. 
General per uterum suum et per uterum anciUarum si«irum,f and that consequently 
hvaven prepares elect from out of heretical societies, by the particular graces it 
is pleased to bestow. They cheerfully maintain moreover with the same Father, 
" that a person imbued with the opinion of Photinus, and believing it to be the 
Catholic faith ought not to be called a heretic, unless after being instructed he 
choose rather to resist the Catholic faith than to renounce the opinion he has em- 
braced.":}: In fine, they admit with St. Augustine, " that we must not rank 
among heretics those who carefully seek after the truth, and who are in a dispo- 
sition to embrace it as soon as discovered." || According to these principles the 
learned bishop Challoner teaches that, '-if error comes from invincible ignorance, 
it excuses from the sin of heresy, provided that with sincerity and without regard 
to worldly interest, a person be ready to embrace the truth immediately it shall 
present itself to him."§ 

Cathoiics cheerfully adhere to this conclusion of the judicious and profound 
Nicole :" it is therefore true according to all Catholic theologians, that there is 
a great number of living members and true children of the Church, in commu- 
nions separated from her; since there are so many infants, who always form a 
considerable part of them and since there might also be some among the adults, 
although she does not pay attention to it, because she does not know them. 'IT 

• Epist. CLXII. t On baptism against the Donatists B. I. ch. X. J Ibid. || Epist. 
CLXII. j Grounds of the Christian Doctrine, page 9, 12th edition, London. HOn 
Unity, vol. I. ch. III. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 43 

intend with the assistance of God, to develope, in the following 
letter, the immediate causes to be derived from it. 

They maintain with the skilful theologians of the University of Paris, " that 
children of the uninstructed partake neither of heresy nor of schism ; that they 

are excused by their invincible ignorance of the state of things: that they 

may, with the grace of God, lead a pure and innocent life: that God does not 
impute to them the errors to which they are attached by an invincible ignorance ; 
that they may thus belong to the soul of the Church with faith, hope, and 
charity.'* 

In fine, leaving to themselves certain morose and ill-informed minds, Catholics 
love to repeat, with regard to the greater number of persons who live in schism 
and heresy, what Salvian formerly said of the Goths and Vandals brought over 
to Christianity by the Arians : "They are heretics, but without knowing it:" 
they err, "but with perfect sincerity." Qualiter pro hoc fahce opinionis errore, 
in die judicii puuiendi sunt, mdius potent scire, misi solus judex.f Religion teaches 
Catholics to judge the doctrines and forbids them to judge the persons of men. 
Of course therefore they maintain the principles and never allow themselves to 
condemn those who are out of their Church ; they leave them to the judgment 
of God. He alone knows the bottom of the heart and the graces that he gives : 
be alone can read the actual disposition of the souls that he calls to his tribunal. 

This doctrine is conformable with the spirit of Christianity, and shews to great 
advantage the extent of Catholicity whilst it forbids us to mark out its precise 
boundaries. It also fully exculpates Catholics from that imputation of enmity, 
and spirit of intolerance, which people are fond of lodging against them. 

• Censure de l'Emile. t De Cub. Dei. Lib. V. 



44 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



APPENDIX I. 



"But (have the innovators said), corruption had found its way to the very 
heart of the Catholic Church ; we were positively obliged to leave her for our 
own security." They have said this, I am aware. We shall presently see what 
we are to think of the weighty accusation ; let us examine in the first place, 
whether it be sufficient to justify their separation. 

1. I maintain that their accusation, were it true, would not excuse them from 
schism, for I would answer them with one of your learned teachers.* "The 
corruptions in a Church are not of so destructive an influence, as schisms and 
divisions from it. It being much in the body spiritual as in the natural: where 
that which severs and dissolves the continuity of parts, tends more to the de- 
struction of the whole, than that which corrupts them. You may cure a throat 
w h ii it is tore, but not when it is cut." 

I would answer them with St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, that there never can 
be a lawful necessity for destroying unity; that Aaron bore with a multitude of 
Jews, who had erected for themselves an idol; Moses with a million of people who 
were ever murmuring against God; David, with Saul; Isaiah, with those whom 
be accused of an infinity of crimes ; and Jesus Christ with Judas. I would reply 
with the same fathers that Jesus Christ has enjoined the preservation of union 
among ourselves, reserving separation to hims.'lf alone, because the right of se- 
parating belongs to him alone, who can never be mistaken ; that, until the har- 
vest, that is, till the last judgment the chaff and the wheat, the straw and the 
grain must remain mixed together: that therefore we are not to leave the Church, 
because we discover chaff in the morals of individuals, though never in the pub- 
lie faith ; that we for our parts have only to endeavor to become the good grain. 
I would reply that the Donatists in vain pleaded for their justification, that Cath- 
olics were become Pagans, they have not on that account been the less justly 
accused of schism by the whole Church, even by the acknowledgment of pro- 
test ants. 

2. As for the heads of accusation; there is no need of other witnesses than the 
protestants themselves, to acquit the Catholic Church of them. In fact, if in the 
b 'ginning to attract the poor people or to retain them in their party; if after- 
wards to justify their separation by some specious pretext, it was found necessary 
to make a noise with the sounding words, corruption, errors, dangerou-' to salva- 
tion, and idolatry in worship, divine providence permitted that there should arrive 
moments of disinterestedness and calmness, during which the reformers themselves, 
and their adherents after them, have relieved the Catholic Church of these hor.i- 
ble accusations. For this I appeal to the confession of Augsburgh, the most 
authentic and most solemn act of the Lutheran communion; it thus concludes 

* South/s Sermons, vol. V. paye 948. Loudon, 1737. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 45 

the exposition of its doctrines ; " Such is the abridgment of our faith, in which 
nothing will be discovered contrary to scripture, or to the Catholic Church, or 
even to the Roman Church, as far as we can know it from its writers. The dis- 
pute turns upon some few abuses which have been introduced into the Churches 
without any certain authority ; and should there be found some difference, that 
should be borne with, since it is not necessary that the rites of the Church should 
be every where the same."* In the apology is found the same moderation. 
Luther (would you believe it?) in the treatise which he published! against pri- 
vate masses, and in which he relates his famous dialogue with the devil, out- 
rageous as he shews himself against the Catholic Church, which he regards as 
tli j seat of Antichrist and abomination, far from refusing it the title of Church 
on that account, declares in spite of every thing, "that it is the true Church, the 
pillar and support of truth and the iLOst holy place. In this Church," continues 
b ■, " God mh aculously preserves baptism, the text of the Gospel in all languages, 
th • remission of sins and absolution, as well in private confession as in public; 
the sacrament of the altar about Easter and three or four times a year, although 
they have cut off one kind from the people; the vocation and ordination of pas- 
tors, consolation in the last agony, the image of the crucifix, and at the same 
time the remembrance of the death and passion of Jesus Christ; the psalter, the 
Lord's prayer, the Creed, the Decalogue, and many pious canticles in Latin and 
German." And a little later : " Where are found the true relics of the saints, 
there no doubt has been, and still is, the holy Church of Jesus Christ; there have 
dwelt the saints, for the institutions and the sacraments of Jesus Christ are there, 
except one of the kinds, which has been forcibly removed. On this account it ia 
certain that Jesus Christ has been present in it, and that his spirit preserves 
th ;rein the true knowledge of himself, the true faith in his elect." 

Two protcstant ministers of France, in their work Montauban justifie, published 
in 1662, quote a similar passage from Luther's book against the Anabaptists. 
They inform as afterwards that the answer given by Melahchton to his mother was 
known by all Germany and even through the whole of Europe. She asked him, 
which of the two religions was the bettor, the Catholic or the Protestant. "In 
my opinion," replied lu, "the Lutheran is the most plausible; the Catholic, the 
most secure." 

1 appeal moreover, both to the declarations of faith sent by the Calvinists of France 
to the protectants of Germany, in which they adhere to the Confession of Augs- 
burgh, except the 10th article upon the Eucharist; and to that of Theodore Beza, 
speaker for the Calvinistio party at the celebrated conference of Poissy4 The 
cardinal de Lorraine having proposed to him to receive the Confession of Augs- 
bnrgh in all LU articles, Beza accepted them without hesitation, with the excep- 
tion of that of the Lord'- Supper, and solemnly assured him of the consent of all 
hit brethren. Here then is the Catholic and Roman faith recogniz id, by authen- 
tic acts, to be conformable in essential points with the faith of the Lutherans and 
Calvinists (the Eucharisl excepted), and consequently exeulpated, by their own 
confession, from idolatry, fundaoa mtal errors, and all corruptions incompatible 

with salvation. And as for the Euchari I. they cannot accuse of idolatry the 
adoration we there pay to Jesus Christ, since they tolerate it in the Lutherans, 

* Art. 21, An. 1530. 1 1034. 1 1007. 



46 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

many of whom pay the same adoration to Jesus Christ in their sacrament, while 
the rest, agree at least, after Luther, that there is no crime in adoring .Jesus 
Christ present upon the altar. It is moreover remarkable that the most learned 
Calvinists have argued with these latter, that they could not without impiety 
refuse their adoration to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, where they believe him to 
bo present, and that in this respect Catholics reasoned more consistently than they 
did themselves. 

Calvin in person assures us* that Jesus Christ in order that his Church might 
not entirely perish, had preserved baptism and the essentials of religion in France, 
Italy, Germany, Spain, England, &c, and in his commentaries upon St. Paul, 
he ranks among the saints, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, 
ami many others nho resembled them, professing, no doubt, the doctrine that these 
saints professed, the Catholics of their time did, and as they have done ever since. 
Peter Martyr expresses himself much in the same manner. 

Daille, the celebrated minister of Charenton,f after proving that the Church 
of Rome admitted the articles of the Creed, adds: "And if there be still any 
other principal article, this Church receives them all and embraces them with 
you, and condemns the names and the memory of those, who have either shaken or 
overturned them in ancient or modern times. Truly we cannot deny, nor would 
we wish to deny, that the Church of Rome believes these holy truths. Thanks 
be to our Lord for having preserved them for so many ages amidst so many 
revolutions. We could indeed have desired that she had never added any thing 

of her own If she had remained within these bounds, neither our fathers, 

nor we should ever had any reasons for leaving her communion." And in another 
part, after enumerating the fundamental articles of Protestants, he continues : 
" Rome does not call in question the articles, which we believe; it even professes 
to believe them. Who can deny, even in our day, that Rome admits the neces- 
sary articles.":}: Truth however obliges me to tell you, that Daille seemed to be 
ashamed, when in the presence of his brethren in Germany, of having conceded 
so much to the Church of Rome. But, whatever he asserted afterwards respect- 
ing the pernicious opinions added by her to the necessary articles, it still is equally 
certain that the acknowledgments just cited were made by him. 

I have still another important witness to produce, |[ the too famous Bishop of 
Spalatro, who, while a refugee in England under James I;, published there, in 
1616, his Latin work upon the Ecclesiastical republic, in which he expresses him- 
self as follows: "It is one thing to desert the faith, by a deficiency; and another 
to injure the faith, by excess. Heresy properly - speaking consists in the deficien- 
cy, that is to say, when an essential article is denied or not admitted. I was born 
it is true, in the Church of Rome ; to it 1 am indebted for my education and my 
dignities; I grew gray in its bosom. Although I have for a long time been im- 
bued with its errors, I will not, for 1 cannot, acknowledge that 1 ever was a here- 
tic in the sense above explained, not even materially so. For most assuredly 
there is no fundamental articles of faith, that this Church rejects or that 1 have 
ever rejected with it." And afterwards on this point: "What then are we to 
think of the Church of Rome? Is it Catholic or not? I answer, still keeping in 

* Instit. chr. B. IV. ch. II. t Quoted by Messrs. de Wallemburgh — dpol. ch. V. 
I La loifondce part III. || M. Ant. de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, in Dalmatia. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 47 

view a deficiency in fundamentals, that this Church has always been and is still 
at the present day, perfectly Catholic, inasmuch as she professes and believes the 
Catholic and fundamental faith, in all its integrity; although I doubt not that its 
faith is rather sickly than sound, and that it has lost some of its beauty by an 
admixture of strange additions." 

There is no one, not even the impetuous Jurieu, but who has been obliged to 
acknowledge that salvation is attainable in the Church of Rome. He afterwards 

indeed denies having said it, and doubtlessly would wish not to have done so 

He redoubles his invectives and calumnies against it, and goes so far as to pretend 
that in it is idolatry as gross as formerly existed at Athens. "But, with all this 
(said M. Bossuet.) God is the Master, God compels the enemies of the truth and 
the calumniators of the Church to say more than they would wish, and while in 
the very act of calumniating the Cuurch, they unavoidably find themselves at 
the feet of that Church, acknowledging that men are saved in her communion." 
The passages from Jurieu follow after : you may find them in the third "Adver- 
tisement" of this great Bishop to the Protestants. 

I pass on to some particular facts, which will also give you to understand that 
the opinion of the reformed teachers is favorable to the Church of Rome. Henry 
IV. after having conquered his kingdom sword in hand, applied himself seriously 
to the study of religion. Although the interests of his crown might give him an 
inclination towards Catholicism, he weighed the reasons on both sides; and it 
was principally from the acknowledgment of the divines of his party, that he 
determined upon embracing the Catholic religion; for when the most able min- 
isters acknowledged to him that he could also work out his salvation in this 
Church, he exclaimed: "Then I will take the safest side."* M. de Sully had 
nit only declared to him that he held it as certain that men might be saved being 
Catholics; but moreover mentioned to this Prince five of the principal ministers, 
win i were not opposed to this sentiment. 

Formerly, when in England, 1 read the declaration made by the Duchess of 
Fork before hep death, under Charles II., of the reasons that had induced her to 
embrace the Catholic religion. 1 have now nothing but the translation before 
mi- :+ 1 have reason to believe it faithful. " I was desirous, (says she,) of con- 
ferring upon these matters with the two most talented bishops that we have in 
England, and both of them candidly acknowledged to me, that there are many 
things in the Church of Rome, which it were desirable that the Church of Eng- 
land had always preserved) such as confession, which they cannot deny that 
God himself commanded, and praying I'm' tin- dead, which is our of the most 
authentic and mosl anoieni practices of the < Ihristian religion ; that, as For them- 
e 1\ ■•-, ill--, -till made use of them in private, without making profession of them 
in public. 

■• A- I was pree ing one of these bishops upon the other points of controversy, 
and principally upon the real prea mce of Jesus < Ihrisl in the adorable sacrament 

n; he altar, h ■ frankly replied to me, that, if he were a Catholic, In- would 

not ehange hi religion \ hut that having been brought up in the Church in which 
he h lievi •! himself to enjoy all th.it. was necessary for Balvation, ami having been 

* Mini . de Sully, eh. xxx\ iii. \ See the and Of vol. ii. of the Hist, of Calvin, l>y 
Mtuoibourg. 



48 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

baptized in it, he thought he could not leave it without great scandal." Oh! but 
unity and schism ! did they never enter your mind, my Lord? 

Elizabeth Christina, Queen of Charles VI., and mother of the immortal Maria 
Theresa, was desirous before she accepted the imperial crown, of securing the 
most important of all affairs, her salvation. She consulted upon the subject the 
most able protectant divines, and they declared to her, by an authentic and pub- 
lic document, that the Catholic religion also conducted to salvation. 

On occasion of the projected marriage (afterwards ratified), of the Princess 
of Wolfenbuttel with Charles III., King of Spain, the faculty of theology at 
nelmstadt were consulted upon the following question. Can a Protestant Prin- 
cess, destined to marry a Catholic Prince, embrace the Catholic religion, with 
safe conscience ? The professors unanimously gave an affirmative opinion in a 
long and argumentative reply, which they all signed, the 28th of April, 1707. 
Vou may read it at the end of a small work entitled : " The Duke of Brunswick's 
fifty reasons for leaving the Lutheran communion to enter into the Catholic 
Church."* 

To these decisions, I could join the testimonies of your own instructors, such 
as Barrow, Hooker, Cowel, Bunny, Some, Morton, Montague, Iieylin, Potter, 
Laud, Stillingfleet, &c. Of these I shall only cite one, who is of great -weigl it. 
" I declare, and am bound candidly to declare (says Thorndyke) I know not of 
any article necessary to salvation, that is prohibited by the Church of Rome ; 
nor of any incompatible with salvation, that is propounded by her."t 

What shall we say of so many individuals who, being born and brought up in 
protestant communions, accustomed to hear of nothing but the errors, supersti- 
tions, and idolatry of the Church of Rome, induced afterwards by circumstances 
to examine more closely its doctrine, its principles, and its worship; have ac- 
knowledged their purity and conformity with the primitive faith and practice) 
have thrown aside their hatred of it together with the prejudices that had only 
been recommended to their belief by misrepresentations and calumnious imputa- 
tions, and have concluded by ranking themselves among the number of her chil- 
dren, and by defending and vindicating her from the errors and crimes, whi h 
they themselves had so long been accustomed to lay to her charge. Such, among 
others, in my country, were the celebrated Cardinal Duperron, the grave and 
sensible Dcsraahis, the eloquent PelissOn, the learned Morin, priest of the Oi a- 
toire, and Papin, long a zealous minister of Calvinism, and who, after preaching 
his errors in France, England, and Germany, came to renounce and abjure them 
in the hands of the great bishop of Meaux ; and in your country, Challoner, 
Gother, the two Hays, and the anonymous author of an excellent work which 
docs no less honor to his heart than to his head.t All these distinguished men, 

* Sold by Keating, Duke street, Grosvenor square, London, 1814. t Thorndyke in 
Epilog, p. 146. %An Essay towards a Proposal for Catholic Communion. This is an 
excellent work, that cannot be sufficiently recommended to the English, who wish 
to become acquainted with the true Church. It was reprinted in London some few 
years back at the expense of the late M. Sheldon Constable, of Burton. 

And to cite more recent examples, I will here call to your recollection two striking 
conversions, that of M. Nathaniel Thayer, who after being a minister of the sect of 
puritans at Boston, was converted at Rome, in 1783, and has himself published the 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 49 

to whom many more might have been added, have left behind them admirable 
works, equally useful to those who seek the truth, and to those who are carried 
on by their zeal to defend it. 

I can personally assure you, sir, that, having often had occasion, during my 
long residence in your country, to converse upon the difference of our religions 
with English bishops and divines, and even with well instructed laics; 1 have 
always found them of the same opinion and almost employing the same words. 
They would say to me that " their religion and mine were equally good ; that the 
greatest part of the differences turned upon ceremonies and points of discipline, 
and some also upon opinions superadded (would they say), to the ancient belief 
by our Church, and which theirs had thought proper to retrench ; they consider- 
ed the Churches of France and England as two sisters, in whom were discovera- 
ble a family likeness and the leading features of resemblance." 

Would to God, sir, that this resemblance might become perfect, as it formerly 
was, and as it ought never to have ceased to be I 

After the facts and testimonies you have just read, I dare flatter myself, sir, 
that you, by this time, no longer doubt of the injustice of the imputations cast 
upon the Church of Rome. They have originated in that sourness, malignity, 
and hatred, which the spirit of party always produces, and from people unfortu- 
nately finding it their interest to extend and support the defection. Destitute of 
reality and proofs, they recoil upon their inventors, and never will they justify 
the rupture. "It was evil done of them who first urged such a separation."* 
Calvin therefore was wrong in his conceit, when he wrote to Melanchton in 1552: 
" We have been compelled to separate from the whole world. "f 

motives that led him back to Catholic unity ; that of Miss Elizabeth Pitt, a relation 
of the immortal minister, whose talents and eloquence have so long been the ad- 
miration and the astonishment of England ; she pronounced her vows at the convent 
of the visitation at Abbeville, the 26th of November, 1787. I present you with the 
conclusion of the letter which, she wrote upon her conversion to the cure de Saint 
Jacques, of the same town, the 20th of June, 1788 : " As for the protestante, who 
may obtain information of it, I do not consider myself calculated to instruct them, 
much less to convert them : but I conjure them, as my brethren, whose salvation is 
most dear to me, to follow one piece of advice ; which is, not to reject, without the 
most serious examination, the doubts, which must be originated in their minds, if 
they think deliberately upon it, by the novelty of their belief and its variations since 
the reformation, compared with the antiquity and unity of the Catholic doctrine ; 
for the true faith is one ; and must necessarily be traced to the apostles and to Jesus 
Christ. May it please God to enlighten them, as he has deigned to enlighten me, in 
order to draw me from the errors in which my birth and education had unfortunately 
engaged me." Germany presents, in our days, a multitude of enlightened protcs- 
tants, who have embraced Catholicism, such as the learned M. Schlcgel and his 
wife, daughter of the celebrated Mendelsohn : M. le compto de Stolberg, not less 
illustrious for his profound learning than for his noble birth : M. Werner, who from 
a poet becomes an humble priest, attracts all Vienna to his eloquent discourses, as 
he had before drawn Berlin to his dramatic representations : the learned Lutheran 
minister Baron de Stark, a Catholic in private life and still more in his last works ; 
the celebrated jurist M. de Haller, &c, &c. 

•Bunny's Treatise tending to pacification, p. 109. t " Disccssionem facere a mundo 
oto coacti sumus." 
5 



50 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

To prove, however, that all these accusations were inadmissable, it would have 
been quite sufficient, without the detail, to have made the single observation 
with which this note, already too long, shall be concluded. Who are they that 
have dared to accuse the Church of innovation in dogma, error in doctrine, 
superstition in practice, and idolatry in worship ? Who are they? The question 

,S AUhehetd of all appears Luther, an Augustinian friar ; next Carlostadtius an 
archdeacon; Melanchton, a professor of the Greek language; all three at W ir- 
temburg; their party is quickly joined by (Ecolampadius, a monk of the order 
St. Laurence, near Augsburgh ; by Munster, a grey friar ; by Bucer, a domimcan ; 
and bv the famous Muncer, who from a disciple, became the infuriated leader of 
the anabaptists. So much for the first Lutherans. In Switzerland, Zuingbus, 
the cure of Glaris ; at Geneva, in Switzerland, and in France, Calvin, the young 
cure of Pontl'Eveque, near Noyon; Theodore Beza, the Latin poet and prior 
at Loniemeau; Peter Martyr, a Florentinian, who left the regular chapter ot St. 
Augustine, ran from Italy with Ochin, general of the Capuchins, to dogmatize 
in Switzerland, then at Strasburgh, then in England, and last of all once more 
in Switzerland, where he died. So much for the Calvimsts.* ■.-.:, 

In Scotland, Knox, a monk, a priest, and afterwards the furious disciple of 
Calvin, whose principles he conveys to his native country, where he puts every 
thin- into a flame ;t the Earl Murray, the natural, but unnaturally cruel brother 
of Mary Stuart, who passed from the convent of St. Andrew to the regency of 
the kino-dom: Buchanan, the ungrateful calumniator of Mary Stuart ;% so much 
for the presbyterians. In fine, for the reformers of your country, I find a house 
of lords, with the exception of many lords and of all the bishops; a small ma- 
jority of the house of commons, together with the Queen and her council. Now 
what do we discover in the persons 1 have just named ? I touch not here upon 
selfish motives of ambition, interest, and lust, nor upon the morals and the con- 
duct of these fiery fabricators of the reformation, which present an appearance 
any thin- but apostolic. I pass by the scandalous marriages of the priests, and 
of religious men with religious women, which, when recurring among us in the 
midst of our impious revolution, have excited contempt and ridicule. || But I 
ask what was the character of the personages in the ecclesiastical hierarchy I 
We're they such as Jesus Christ had in view when he said : " Go, teach all nations. 
I am with you to the end of the world?" Was it to them that he said: 
"He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me?' 
Was it to them that he promised the Holy Spirit, to come and instruct them in 
all truth ? But as these lofty and magnificent promises were made to the apostles 
and their successors, as the apostles, and after them the bishops only, have, at 
all times, according to the promises and ordinances of Jesus Christ, governed 

• See Appendix II. t " The ruffian of the reformation," said Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
1 It is said that he retracted on his death bed all that he had said injurious to tea 
character of Mary. II The bantering of Erasmus upon these sacrilegious connections 
is well known : « (Ecolampadius has just married a tolerably pretty girl ; seemingly 
this is the way he intends to mortify his flesh. They are mistaken in saying that 
Lutheranism is a tragical affair; for my part, I am persuaded that nothing is more 
comic, for the winding up of the piece is always a marriage, as in the comedies. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 51 

his Church, decided controversies, and declared as judges what was revealed and 
what not ; it was an easy and simple thing to stop the mouths of the innovators, by 
unanimously replying to them on all sides : " Who are you, that you must meddle 
with doctrinal points, must decide that such a doctrine is an error, such a point 
of discipline a corruption, such a practice idolatrous, and that you must needs 
produce a schism in the Church ? As for you, you are but mere laics ; and you 
others are only ecclesiastics of an inferior order. To decide on these subjects 
belongs not either to the one or other of you ; the power comes from a higher 
source. Tell your complaints, lay open your doubts, and welcome ; put forth to 
the word your reasonings upon the matters that offend and scandalize you. So- 
licit and urge, if you please, your superiors in the spiritual order, your judges, 
the bishops, to examine into them. But respectfully await their decision, and 
receive it with submission : for such is the ordinance of God, and obedience is 
your duty, and the part you have to act in religion." 

Instead of this Christian and canonical proceeding, we find them disregarding 
the authority of all the bishops in the world, arrogating to themselves superemi- 
nence, overturning the arrangements of the divine Legislator, introducing anarchy 
in its place, preaching up and commanding a separation, and tearing in pieces 
the body of Jesus Christ. And this is what they have called a reformation. Let 
them give it what name they please, it is as clear as the sun, that a reformation 
of such a kind will eternally bear on the face of it the character of revolt, and 
in the indelible stain of schism will disclose the mark of reprobation. 



52 ON THE GilURCH OF ENGLAND 



APPENDIX II. 



An Historical Account of the Opinions that the First 
Reformers have given for one another, and of the effects 
of their preaching. 



LUTHER. 

He himself bears testimony that, "while a Catholic, he passed his life in aus- 
terities, in watchings, in fasts and praying, in poverty, chastity, and obedience."* 
When once reformed, that is to say, another man, he says that: "as it does not 
depend upon him not to be a man, so neither does it depend upon him to be 
without a woman ; and that he can no longer forego the indulgence of the vilest 
natural propensities."! 

1. "I burn with a thousand flames in my unsubdued flesh ; I feel myself car- 
ried on with a rage towards women that approaches to madness. I, who ought 
to be fervent in spirit, am only fervent in impurity.":}: 

2. " To the best of my judgment, there is neither emperor, king, nor devil, to 
whom I would yield ; no, I would not yield even to the whole world." || 

3. " He was so well aware of his immorality, as we are informed by his favorite 
disciple, that he wished they would remove him from the office of preaching."§ 

4. " His timid companion acknowledges that he had received blows from him, 
ah ipso colophon accepi."T[ 

5. "I tremble (wrote he to the same friend,) when I think of the passions of 
Luther; they yield not in violence to the passions of Hercules."** 

6. "This man (said one of his cotemporary reformers), is absolutely mad. 
He never ceases to combat truth against all justice, even against the cry of his 
own conscience."!! 

7. " He is puffed up with pride and arrogance, and seduced by Satan."!! 

8. " Yes, the devil has made himself master of Luther, to such a degree, as to 
make one believe he wishes to gain entire possession of him."|||| 

" 1 wonder more, Luther (wrote Henry VIII. to him), that thou art not, 
in good earnest, ashamed, and that thou darest to lift up thy eyes either before 
God or man, seeing that thou hast been so light and so inconstant as to allow 
thyself to be transported by the instigation of the devil to thy foolish concupis- 

• Tom. v. In cap. I. ad Galat. v. 14. t Ibid. S&rm. rir Matrim. fol. 119. % Luth. Ta- 
ble-talk. || Idem. Rcsp. ad Maleg. Reg. Aug. § Sleid. Book II. 1520. 1T Mel. Letters 
*o Theodore. "Ibid, tt Hospiuiau. ftlEcolampadius. |||| Zuinglius. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 53 

cences. Thou, a brother of the order of St. Augustine, hast been the first to 
abuse a consecrated nun ; which sin would have been, in times past, so rigorously 
punished, that she would have been buried alive and thou wouldst have been 
scourged to death. But so far art thou from correcting thy fault, that moreover, 
shameful to say, thou hast taken her publicly to wife, having contracted with 

her an incestuous marriage and abused the poor and miserable to the great 

scandal of the world, the reproach and opprobium of thy country, the contempt 
of holy matrimony, and the great dishonor and injury of the vows made to God. 
Finally, what is still more detestable, instead of being cast down and overwhelmed 
with grief and confusion, as thou oughtest to be, at thy incestuous marriage, O 
miserable wretch, thou makest a boast of it, and instead of asking forgiveness 
for thy unfortunate crime, thou dost incite all debauched religious, by thy letters 
and thy writings, to do the same."* 

" God, to punish that pride of Luther, which is discoverable in all his works 
(says one of the first saciamentarians), withdrew his spirit from him, abandon- 
ing him to the spirit of error and of lying, which will always possess those who 
have followed his opinions, until they leave them."f 

* Luther treats us as an execrable and condemned sect, but let him take care 
lest he condemn himself as an arch-heretic, from the sole fact, that he will not 
and cannot associate himself with those who confess Christ. But how strangely 
does this fellow let himself be carried away by his devils ! How disgusting is his 
language and how full are his words of the devil of hell! He says that the devil 
dwells now and for ever in the bodies of the Zuinglians ; that blasphemies exhale 
from their insatanized, supersatanized, and persatanized breasts; that their 
tongues are nothing but lying tongues, moved at the will of Satan, infused, per- 
fused, and transfused with his infernal poison? Did ever any one hear such lan- 
guage come out of an enraged demon ?t 

" He wrote all his works by the impulse and the dictation of the devil, with 
whom he had dealing, and who in the struggle seemed to have thrown him by 
victorious arguments." || 

"It is not an uncommon thing (said Zuinglius), to find Luther contradicting 
himself from one page to another ;§ and to see him in the midst of his fol- 
lowers, you would believe him to be possessed by a phalanx of devils. "IT 

Erasmus the most learned man of his age, he who has been called the pride of 
1 1 ol hind, the love and delight of Great Britain, and of almost every other nation,** 
wrote to Luther himself: "All good people lament and groan over the fatal 
schism with which thou shakest the world by thy arrogant, unbridled, and sedi- 
tious spirit, "ft 

" Luther (says Erasmus again), begins to be no longer pleasing to his disci- 
ples, so much so that they treat him as a heretic, and affirm, that being void of 
the spirit of the Gospel, he is delivered over to the deliriums of a wordly spirit. "ft 

" In very truth, Luther is extremely corrupt (said Calvin) ; || || would to God he 

* In Horim. p. 299. t Conrad Iteis. Upon the Lord's Supper, B. 2. J The church 
of Zurich, against the Confessions of Luther, p. 61. || Ibid. §T. II. lirpons. ad con- 
flat I.utheri,fol. 44. IT Ibid, fob 381. "Preface to the London Edition, year 1642. 
1 1 F.j.istlo to Luther, 1626. XX Epistle to Cardinal Sado let, 1628. |||| Cited by Conrad 
Schlusscmborg. 

5* 



54 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

had taken pains to put more restraint upon that intemperance which rages in 
every part of him ! would to God he had been attentive to discover his vices."* 

"Calvin says again, that, "Luther had done nothing to any purpose that 

people ought not to let themselves be duped by following his steps and being 
half-papist; that it is much better to build a church entirely afresh "f Some- 
times, it is true, Calvin praised Luther so far as to call him " the restorer of 
Christianity.''^ He protested however against their honoring him with the name 
of Elias. His disciples afterwards made the same protestation. "Those (said 
they), who put Luther in the rank of the prophets, and constitute his writings 
the rule of the Church, have deserved exceedingly ill of the Church of Christ, 
and expose themselves and their Churches to the ridicule and cutting reproaches 
of their adversaries." || 

"Thy school (replied Calvin to Wesphal the Lutheran), is nothing but a 

stinking pig-stye ; dost thou hear me, thou dog? dost thou hear me, thou 

madman? dost thou hear me, thou huge beast?" 

Carlostadius, while retired at Orlamund, had so far ingratiated himself with 
the inhabitants, that they must needs stone Luther, who had run over to rate 
him for his false opinions respecting the Eucharist. Luther tells us this in his 
letter to the inhabitants of Strasburgh : " These Christians attacked me with a 
shower of stones. This was their blessing; Maya thousand devils take theel 
mayst thou break thy neck before thou returnest home again. "§ 

CARLOSTADIUS. 

You shall have his portrait as drawn by the temperate Melanchton. " He was 
(says he), a brutal fellow, without wit or learning, or any light of common 
sense ; who, far from having any mark of the spirit of God, never either knew 
or practised any of the duties of civilized life. The evident marks of impiety 
appeared in him. All his doctrine was either judaical or seditious. He con- 
demned all laws made by Pagans. He would have men to judge according to 
the law of Moses, because he knew not the nature of Christian liberty. He em- 
braced the fanatical doctrine of the Anabaptist immediately that Nicholas Storck 

began to spread it abroad One portion of Germany can bear testimony that 

I say nothing in this but what is true." 

He was the first priest of the reform who married, and in the new fangled mass 
that was made up for his marriage, his fanatical partisans went so far as to pro- 
nounce this man blessed, who bore evident marks of impiety. The collect of the 
massir was thus worded : " Deus qui post logam et impiam sacerdotum tuorum 
coecitatem Beattnn Andraam Carlostadium ca gratia donare dignatus es, ut pri- 
mus, nulia habita ratione papistici juris, uxorem ducere ansus fuerit; da, qusesu- 
mus, ut omnes sacerdotes, recepta, sana mente, ejus vestigia sequentes, ejectis 
concubinis aut eisdem ductis, ad legitimi consortium thori convertantur : per 
Dom. nost. etc." 

The Lutherans informs us, that " it cannot be denied that Carlostadius was 
strangled by the devil, considering the number of witnesses who relate it, the 

*Theol. Cal. L. II. fol. 126. tSee Florium. J Ibid. p. 887. \\In admon, de lib. 
Concord. v i. §Tom. II. fol. 447. Sen. Germ. II Quoted in Florim. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 55 

number of others who have committed it to writing, and even the letters of the 
pastors at Bale.* He left behind him a son, Hans Carlostadius, who, renouncing 
the errors of his father, entered the communion of the Catholic Church." 

ZUINGLIUS. 

I do not refuse (wrote Melanchton) ,f to enter upon a conference (at Marburgh ) 
with CEcolampadius ; for, to speak to Zuinglius is time lost.— It is not, however, 
a light undertaking, because then- opinion is agreeable to many, who are desirous 
of touching the mysteries of God with their hand, and yet permit themselves to 
be conducted by their curiosity." Luther replying to the Landgrave, said ; " Of 
what use is this conference, if both parties bring to it an opinion already formed 
and come with the determination of yielding in nothing. I know for certain that 
they are in error. These are the stratagems of the devil ; and this is the way 
that every thing goes worse and worse." 

" I cannot (says Zuinglius of himself) conceal the tire that burns me and 
diives me on to incontinence, since it is true that its effects have already drawn 
upon me but too many infamous reproaches among the Churches. "% 

The printer at Zurich, said Lavatherus, made a present to Luther of the trans- 
lation of Zuinglius: but he sent it back with abusive language. "I will not 
read (said he) the works of these people, because they are out of the Church, 
and are not only damned themselves, but draw many miserable creatures after 
them. As long as I live 1 shall make war upon them by my prayers and my 
writings." || 

Carlostadius's opinion upon the Eucharist seemed to Luther to be foolish ; 
that of Zuinglius fallacious and wicked, giving nothing but wind and smoke to 
Christians, instead of the true body of Jesus Christ, who spoke of neither sign 
nor figure. § 

"The Zuinglians write that we look upon them as brethren; this is a fiction 
bo foolish and impertinent (proclaimed the Lutherans in full synod) that we 
cannot be sufficiently astonished at their impudence. We do not even grant to 
them a place in the Church, far from recognizing as brethren, a set of people, 
whom we see agitated by the spirit of lying, and uttering blasphemies against 
the Son of Man."1T 

lirentius, whom Bishop Jewel called the grave and learned old man, declares 
that •• the dogmas of the Zuinglians are diabolical, foil of impiety, of corruptions 
and calumnies ; that the error of Zuinglius upon the Eucharist drew along with 
it many others still more sacrilegious;"** he predicted that the Zuinglians would 
noon shew the heresy of the Nestorians springing up again in the Church of God ; 
"soon (says he), will the different articles of our religion disappear one after 
another, and to them will succeed the superstitions of the Pagans, the Talmudists, 
and lh" Mahometans. "ft 

* Hist, de C(tn. August, fol. 41. t Quoted in Florim. Jin Parerws ad Helvct, t. I, 
(1. 113. || Schlnssemb. lib. II. Theol. Calvin, quoted in Florim, p. 96. §In Florim. 
p. 109, » Epitome Colloq. Maul. Brums 1564, p. 83. "Brcutius in Iitcugn, Prophet, 
et Apost. in fine, ttln Bvllingeri Corontde, an. 1544. 



56 ON THE C1IURCII OF ENGLAND 

Luther openly declared that " Zuinglius was an offspring of hell, an associate 
of Arius, a man, who did not deserve to be prayed for " 

" Zuinglius, (said Luther) is dead and damned, having desired like a thief and 
a rebel, to compel others, to follow his error."* 

"Many protestants (testifies the Apologist of Zuinglius), have not scrupled to 
pronounce that he died in his sins, and thus to send him to hell."t 

"Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the Sacramenta- 
rians, nor stood in the way of the Zuinglians, nor sat in the chair of the Zurich- 
ians. You understand what I mean."t 

CALVIN. 

Calvin v being obliged to leave France to disengage himself from law affairs, 
went to Germany and there sought out the greater part of those who were busy 
in disturbing the consciences and agitating the minds of men. At Basle he was 
presented by Bucer to Erasmus, who resorted to the private conferences without 
being induced to embrace the opinions of these innovators. Erasmus, after hav- 
ing conversed with him upon some of the points of religion, exceedingly aston- 
ished at what he had discovered in his dispositions, turned towards Bucer and 
shewing young Calvin to him, said: "I see a great plague rising in the Church 
against the Church ; video magnam pestem oriri in Ecclesia contra Ecclesiam." 

"Calvin, I am aware, is violent and wayward : so much the better; he is the 
very man to advance our cause." || Thus spoke a German who had taught him 
at Bourges, and who, together with Greek and Hebrew, had crammed him with 
the new doctrines of Germany. 

" Calvin, (said Bucer, ) is a true mad dog. The man is wicked, and he judges 
of people according as he loves or hates them." 

Baudoin, expressing his disapprobation of the opinions of Bucer and Melanch- 
ton, said that he admired their modesty, but that ho could not endure Calvin, 
because he had found him too thirsty for vengeance and blood ; propter nimiam 

vindictae et sanguinis sitim Baudoin, induced by Cassandre, had renounced 

the doctrine of Calvin. He was tin? most learned and renowned lawyer of his 
time; he was born in the year 1520, and died in 1573. See his Funeral Oration 
on Papyrius Masson. Paris 1638. See Bibl. Mazarine. 

The intolerant and sanguinary spirit of this too celebrated man appears in one 
of his letters to his friend, the Marquis du Poet; "Do not find fault with our 
ridding the country of these fanatics, who exhort the people by their discourses 
to bear up against us, who blacken our conduct, and wish to make our faith be 
considered as an idle fancy. Such Monsters ought to be suffocated, as happened 
at the execution of Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." The original of this letter 
has been preserved in the archives of the Marquis du Montelimart. We are 
assured that M. de Voltaire received in 1772 an authentic copy of it, according 
to his request, and that, after he had read it, he wrote on the margin some lines 
against Calvin. 

* Tom. II. fol. 36, cited in Florim. t Gualter in Apclog- Tom. I. oper. Zuingl. 
iul. 1 B> % Luth. Epist. ad Jacob presbyt. || Wolniar. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 57 

" What man was ever more imperious and positive and more divinely infallible 
than Calvin, against whom the smallest opposition that men dared to make was 
always a work of Satan, and a crime deserving of fire."* 

Calvin's erroneous opinions upon the Trinity excited against him the zeal of 
one, who in other respects held his sacramentarian opinion ; " What demon has 

urged thee, Calvin! to declaim with the Arians against the Son of God? 

It is that antichrist of the north that thou hast the imprudence to adore, that 
grammarian Melanchton."t " Beware, Christian readers, above all, ye ministers 
of the word, beware of the books of Calvin. They contain an impious doctrine, 
the blasphemies of Arianism, as if the spirit of Michael Servetus had escaped 
from the executioner, and according to the system of Plato had transmigrated 
whole and entire into Calvin.":}: The same author gave as the title to his writ- 
ings : " Upon the Trinity, and upon Jesus Christ our Redeemer, against Henry 
Bollinger, Peter Martyr, John Calvin, and the other ministers of Zurich and 
Geneva, disturbers of the Church of God." 

By teaching that God was the author of sin Calvin raised against him all par- 
ties of the reform. The Lutherans of Germany united to refute so horrible a 
blasphemy; "This opinion (said they), ought every where to be held in horror 
and execration; it is a stoical madness, fatal to morals, monstrous and blas- 
phemous." || 

"This Calvinistic error is horribly injurious to God, and of all errors the most 
mischievous to mankind. According to this Calvinistic theologian, God would 
be the most unjust tyrant. — It would no longer be the devil, but God himself who 
would be the Father of lies."§ 

The same author, who was superintendent and general inspector of the Lutheran 
Churches in Germany, in the three volumes he published against the Calvinistic 
theology, IT never makes mention of the Calvinists without giving them the epi- 
thets of uiilii.lit vera, impious, blasphemous, impostors, heretics, incredulous, people 
itruck with the spirit of blindness, barefaced and shameless men, turbulent ministers, 
busy agents of Satan, &c. 

Reshusius, after exposing the doctrine of the Calvinists, indignantly declares, 
that "they not only transform God into a devil, the very idea of which is horri- 
ble: but that they annihilate the merits of Jesus Christ to such a degree that 
they deserve to be banished forever to the bottom of hell."** 

The Calvinists themselves objected against this doctrine of their leader. Bul- 
linger proves its erroneousness from Scripture, the Fathers, and the whole Church. 
" We dp therefore (said he) prove clearly from Scripture this dogma taught 
every where since the Apostles' time, that God is not the author of evil, the 
cause of Bin, but our corrupt inclinations or concupiscence, and the devil, who 
moves, excites and inflames it. "ft And Ciiatillon, whom Calvin had for a long 
time taken into his house and fed at his table, was one of the first to take up tho 
|i m against his benefactor and master, although he did it with all the deference 
due to this double title. "He is a false God (said he) Chat is so slow to mercy, 

* J. J. Bousseau, Lettru de la mont. t Stancharus de Mediot. in Calv. inxtit. No. 4. 
t Id. ibid. No. 3. \\ Corpus doctrina Christiana. \ Conrad. Schlussemb. Ccdvin. Tha>> 
log. fol. 46. II Krancfort. I0W. •' Lib. de I'rasmt. Corp. Chritt. I olio, in fine. ttDe- 
cad. 111. Serm X. 



58 ON THE CTURCH OF ENGLAND 

so quick to wrath, who has created the greater part of men to destroy them, and 
has not only predestinated them to damnation, but even to the cause of their 
damnation. This God, then, must have determined from all eternity, and he now 
actually wishes and causes that we be necessitated to sin ; so that thefts, adulte- 
ries and murders are never committed but at his impulse ; for he suggests to men 
perverse and shameful affections ; he hardens them, not merely by simple permis- 
sion, but actually and efficaciously ; so that the wicked man accomplishes the 
work of God and not his own, and it is no longer Satan, but Calvin's God, who 
is really the father of lies."* 

Calvin in his turn forgets not to reproach Chatillon with his ingratitude, and 
adds: "Never did any man carry pride, perfidy and inhumanity to a higher 
pitch. He who does not know thee to be an impostor, a buti'oon, an impudent 
cynic and one ever ready to rail at piety, is not fit to judge of anything." To- 
wards the end of his reply, he dismisses him with the following Genevan bene- 
diction : " May the God Satan quit thee : amen. Geneva, 1558." 

About 1558, appeared in London, a work written, or at least approved, by the 
English Bishops, against the Calvinistic sect of Puritans. Calvin and Beza are 
there described! as intolerant and proud men, who by open rebellion against 
their prince, had founded their gospel, and pretended to rule the Churches with 
a more odious tyranny, than that, with which they had so often reproached the 
sovereign pontiffs. They protest in the presence of the Almighty God, that, 
" amongst all the texts of Scripture quoted by Calvin or his disciples, in favor 
of the Church of Geneva against the Church of England, there is not a single 
one, that is not turned to a sense unknown to the Church and to all the Fathers, 
since the time of the apostles ; so that were Augustin, Ambrose, Jerom, Chrysos- 
tom, &c. to return again to life and to see in what manner the Scripture had 
been cited by these Genevese doctors, they would be astonished that the world 
should ever have met with a man, so audacious and extravagant as to dare, with- 
out the least color of truth, to ill treat in such a way, the word of God, himself, 
his readers and the whole world." And after declaring that from this Genevese 
source an impoisoned, seditious and Catalinarian doctrine had been spread over 
England, they add: "Happy, a thousand times happy our island, if neither 
English nor Scot had ever put foot in Geneva, if they had never become acquainted 
with a single individual of these Genevese doctors !" 

The partizans of Calvin have attempted, and for his credit, I wish they had 
succeeded in their attempt, to rescue his memory from the crime and disgrace of 
having the mark of infamy branded on his shoulder. "What must pass as an 
indisputable proof of the crimes imputed to Calvin, is that, after the accusation 
had been prepared against him, the Church of Geneva, not only did not shew the 
contrary, but did not even contradict the information, which Berthelier, commis- 
sioned bv the persons of the same town, gave at Noyon. This information was 
Dgned by the most respectable inhabitants of Noyon, and was drawn op with all 
th * accustomed forms of the law. And in the same information we see that this 
hcresiarch, having been convicted of an abominable sin, which was always pun- 

* Oastelliou in lib. de Pradcslin. ad Calvin, t A Survey of the pretended holy 
discipline, page 44, by Bishop Bancroft. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 59 

ishcd by fire, the punishment that he had deserved was at the intercession of his 
bishop, mitigated into that of the fleur-de-lis Add to this, that Bolesque, hav- 
ing given the same information, BerthelTer, who was still living in the time of 
Bolesque, did not contradict it, as, undoubtedly, he would have done, had he 
been able to do so, without going against the conviction of his conscience, and 
opposing the public belief. Thus the silence both of the whole town interested 
in the affair and also of his secretary, is, on this occasion, an infallible proof of 
the disorders imputed to Calvin."* They were at that time so uncontested, that 
a Catholic writer, speaking of the scandalous life of Calvin, advances as a fact , 
well known in England, that, " the leader of the Calvinists had been branded 
with the fleur-de-lis and had fled from his native town; and that his antagonist 
Wittaker, acknowledging the fact, merely replied by the following shameful com- 
parison : Calvin has been stigmatized, so has St. Paul, so have others also."f I 
find also that the grave and learned Doctor Stapleton,J who had every opportu- 
nity of gaining information on this subject, having spent his life in the neighbor- 
hood of Noyon, speaks of this adventure of Calvin's in the terms of one who was 
certain of the fact. " Inspiciuntur etiam adhuc hodie civitatis Noviodunensis in 
Picardia scrinia et rerum gestarum monumenta : in illis adhuc hodie legitur 
Joannem hunc Calvinum sodoinice - convictum, ex Episcopi et magistrates indul- 
gentia, solo stigmate in tergo notatum, urbe excessisse ; nee ejus familiae hones- 
tissimi viri, adhuc superstites, impetrare hactenus potuerunt, ut hujus facti 
memoria, quse toti familije notam aliquam inurit, e civicis illis monumentis ac 
scriniis eraderetur."|| Moreover, the Lutherans of Germany equally speak of it 
as of a fact: "De Calvini variis flagitiis et sodomiticis libidinibus, ob quas stig- 
ma Joannis Calvini dorso impressum fuit a magistiatu, sub quo vixit."§ " And 
as for the affected silence of Bcza, it is replied, that the disciple having acquired 
notoriety by the same crimes and the same heresy as his master, he merits not 
the confidence of any one on this point." 

It is very possible and most easy to dissemble like Beza and others after him ; 
but, surely, it is hardly possible to fabricate at pleasure the account, that an eye- 
witness and that cotemporarics have given us of the death of this man, an account 
which must excite compassion and terror in all who hear it. An eye-witness, 
who was then his disciple, gives the following information :1T " Calvinus in des- 
perations finiena vitam obiit turpiasimo et fa>dissimo morbo, quern Deus rebellibus 
el maledictis comminatus est, prius excruciatus et consumptus. Quod ego veris- 
sime attestari audeo, qui funcstum et tragicum illius exitum his meis oculis proo- 
Bens aapexi.** The Lutherans of Germany testify, "Deuui etiam in hoc sceculo 
judicium suum in Calvinum patefecisse, quern in virga furoris visitavit, atque 
bortflrfliter punivit, ante mortis infelicifl horam. Deus enim manu sua potenti 
adco hunc hereticum percussit, ut, desperata. salute, doemonitras invocatis, jorans, 
execrans, et blasphcrnans misserrime, animam malignant, exhalarit; vermibus 



* Card. Richelieu, Traite. p. convert, liv. II. pp. 319, 320. t Campian in the 3d rea- 
son, year 158S- \ Born in 15*0. He was nearly 30 yean of age when i 'alvin died, in 
1564. II Promptuar Catholic, pars. 32, p. 133. (Conrad. Schlnssemb, Calvin Theolog. 
lib. II. II. fol. */2. IT Joan Harem. Apud Pel. Cutzamium. •* Sec. Diet, de Feller 
art. Calvin. 



60 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

circa pudenda in apostheisate seu ulcere fcetentissimo crescentibus, ita ut nullus 
assistentium foetoreui ampliua ferre posset."* 

On this subject 1 find an account too curious to be omitted here. " The Dean 
told me that an old Canon, a familiar friend of Calvin's, had formerly related to 
him the manner, in which John Calvin died, and that he had learned it from a 
man called Petit Jean, who was Calvin's valet and who attended on him to his 
last expiring breath. This man after his master's death, left Geneva, and went 
to reside again at Noyon. He related to this Canon that Calvin on his death bed 
made much lamentation, and that oftentimes he heard him cry out aloud and 
bitterly bewail his condition, and that one day he called him and said ; Go to my 
study, and bring from such a part, ' The Oltice of our Lady according to the use 
at Noyon.' He went and brought it; and Calvin continued a long time praying 
to God from this office : he mentioned that the people of Geneva were unwilling 
to let many persons visit him in his illness, and said that he labored under many 
complaints, such as imposthumes, the rash, the piles, the stone, the gravel, the 
gout, consumption, shortness of breath, and spitting of blood ; and that he was 
struck by God, as those of whom the Prophet speaks Tetigit eos in posteriora, 
opprobrium tempitemum dedit et*."f 

This recital agrees with that of Boise, who also cites the testimony of those 
who attended upon Calvin in his last illness. For after having spoken of the 
complaints mentioned by Bt-za, and of the lousy disease, about which Beza says 
nothing, he adds : " Those who attended upon him to his last breath have testified 
it. Let Beza, or whoever pleases deny it : it is however clearly proved, that he 
cui-sed the hour in which he had ever studied and written : while from his ulcers 
and his whole body proceeded an abominable stench, which rendered him a 
nuisance to himself and to his domestics, who add moreover, that this was the 
reason why he would have no one go and see him." (Life of Calvin, Lyons, 
1577, transl. from the Latin.) 

•Conrad. Schlussemb, in Thcolog. Calvin, lib. II. fol. 72. Franco/, an 1592. 
\ Remargues sur lame de J. Calvin, taken from the records of the chapter at Noyon, 
the personal examination that took place in 1614 ; by James Desmay, doctor of Sor- 
bonne, vie. gen. of Rouen. This little work, dedicated to Lord Kay, earl of Ancas- 
ter, 1621, is to be found in the Bibliotheque du Roi. 

It is the part of candor to signify that I have not seen a word about the famous 
fleur-d«-lis in the work of M. Desmay, although he carefully made his enquiries in 
these places. I should be glad if that silence carried sufficient weight with it to 
destroy the very positive and public assertions of authors who wrote more than forty 
or fifty years before him. It appears that M. Desmay only examined the records of 
the Chapter and not those of the town. Moreover, it was then eighty years after 
the sentence had been passed upon Calvin, and we are assured that his friends had 
succeeded in removing it from the records of the town. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 61 

THEODORE BEZA. 

Let us now pass on to Calvin's celebrated biographer. The Lutherans shall 
teach us in what esteem and value we are to hold him : " Who will not be aston- 
ished (says Heshusius) at the incredible impudence of this monster, whose filthy 
and scandalous life is known throughout France, by his more than cynical epi- 
grams. And yet you would say, to hear him speak, that he is some holy person- 
age, another Job, or an anchoret of the desert, nay greater than St. Paul or 
St. John ; so much does he every where proclaim his exile, his labors, his purity 
and the admirable sanctity of his life."* 

If we wish to refer the matter to one holding an elevated situation among the 
Lutherans: "Beza (says he to us) draws to the life, in his writings, the image 
of those ignorant and gross persons, who for want of reason and argument have 
recourse to abuse, or of those heretics, whose last resource is insult and abuse.... 
and thus, like an incarnate demon, this obscene wretch, this perfect compound 
of artifice and impiety vomits forth his satirical blasphemies. "f The same 
Lutheran testifies that " after having spent twenty-three years of his life in read- 
ing more than 220 Calvinistic productions, he had not met with one, in which 
abuse and blasphemy were so accumulated as in the writings of this wild beast. 
And if any one doubt of it, adds he, let him run over his famous Dialogues 
against Dr. Heshusius. No one would ever imagine they were written by a 
man, but by Beelzebub himself in person ; I should be horror struck to repeat 
the obscene blasphemies, which this impure atheist puts forth on the gravest 
subjects with a disgusting mixture of impiety and buffoonery: undoubtedly, he 
had dipped his pen in some infernal ink." 

"Beza who was a Frenchman, (says Florimond, ) :): and the great buttress of 
Calvin's opinions attacked Luther's version as impious, novel and unheard of." 
" Truly, (retorted the Lutherans,) it well becomes a French merry-andrew, who 
understands not a word of our language, to teach the Germans to speak German." 



MELANCHTON. 

Let us confine ourselves to the judgment passed upon him by those of his com- 
munion. The Lutherans declared in lull synod; "that he had so often changed 
lii.—- opinions upon the supremacy of the Pope, upon justification by faith alone, 
upon the Lord's supper ami free-will, thai ;ill (his his wavering inconstancy 
had staggered the weak in these fundamental questions and prevented a great 

number ft mbracing Che confession of Augsburgh; that by changing and 

recfaanging his writings he had given ton much reason in the Epi copaliaiu to sot 
otl'his variations, and to the faithful to know no longer what docti ine to consider 
as tine." || They add; "that this famous work upon the theological common 

planes would much i <■ appropriately be called a Treatise upon Theological 

witticisms." 

•Traduct. de Florim. p. IOIH. t Schlussemburg, in Thcolog. (Jaluin. lib. II. passim. 
tp. 90. || Colloq. Altaib. fob 503, 503, year 1508. 
C 



62 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Schlusscmburg goes so far as to declare ; " that being struck from above by a 
spirit of Dliudnesa ami dizziness, Melanehton afterwards did nothing but fall from 
one error into another, till at last he himself knew not what to believe."* Be 
says moreover, that; " .Melanchton had, evidently impugned the divine truth, to 
his own shame and the perpetual disgrace of his name."f 

(ECOLAMPADIUS. 

The Lutheran's wrote in the Apology for their Lord's supper, that (Ecolampa- 
dius, a fautor of the sacramentarian opinion, speaking one day to the Landgrave, 
said : " I would rather have my hand cut otf than that it should ever write any 
thing against Luther's opinion respecting the Lord's supper. "J 

W hen this w-as told to Luther, by one who had heard it, the hatred of the 
Patriarch of the reform seemed immediately softened down. On learning the 
death of CEcolampadius, he exclaimed; "Ah! miserable and unfortunate CEco- 
lampadius, thou was the prophet of thy own misery, when thou didst appeal to 
God to exercise his vengeance on thee, if thou taughtest a false doctrine. May 
God forgive thee ; if thou art in such a state that he can forgive thee." 

Whilst the inhabitants of Bale were placing the following epitaph on his tomb 
in the Cathedral: "John CEcolampadius, Theologian, first preacher of evan- 
gelical doctrine in this town and true bishop of the temple ;" Luther was posi- 
tive and sure, and afterwards wrote on his side, that " the devil, whom CEcolam- 
padius employed, strangled him during the night in his bed. This is the excellent 
master (continues he) who taught him that there are contradictions in Scripture. 
See to what Satan brings learned men."|| 

OCHIN. 

This religious man, superior of the Capuchins, leaving Italy and his order, 
where he had acquired a great reputation for the austerity of his life and his 
distinguished talent in preaching, repaired to Peter Martyr in Switzerland, 
where, after striking acquaintance with the Sacramentarians, he went a step 
farther and preached up Arianism. "Be is become (wrote Beza to Diducius) a 
wicked lecher, a fautor of the Arians, a mocker of Christ and his Church. "§ 

'Tis true that Ochin had, on his part, been equally severe upon the religionists 
of Geneva and Zurich ; for in his dialogue against the sect of terrestrial Gods, he 

thus expressed himself in their regard "These people are desirous that we 

should hold as an article of faith whatever comes from their brain. Be who 
does not choose to follow them is a heretic. What they dream of in the night 
(an allusion to Zuinglius) is committed to writing, is printed and held as an 
oracle. Do not think that they will ever change. So far are they from being 
disposed to obey the Church, that on the contrary the Church must obey them. 
Is not this being popes ? Is it not being gods upon earth ? It it not tyrannizing 
over the consciences of men ?" 

ThMl. Calvin, lib. II. p. 9J . t Ibid. p. »2. t See Florim. p. 175. || T)e Miss. priv. 
§Florim. i>9G. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 63 

Such were the principal authors of the religious and political excitements that 
desolated the Church and the world in the 16th century. They were perfectly 
acquainted with each other; they had seen one another, had conferred together 
in different conferences ; the}' labored with emulation, if not with unanimity, at 
the work, which they called reform. It is impossible at the present day to form 
respecting their doctrine, their characters and persons, more correct notions than 
those, which they themselves entertained respecting them and which they have 
transmitted to us. It would therefore be unreasonable in us not to refer to the 
reciprocal testimonies they have borne to one another. Neither is it less true, 
that if we go by their own judgments, we cannot but consider them as odious 
beings and unworthy ministers, whether they have mutually done justice to each 
other or have calumniated each other. In a word, the only point upon which 
they agree is to blacken and condemn one another, and it is but too certain that 
this point, in which they were all agreed, is also the only one upon which they 
were all right. 

You then who have just heard them revealing to the world their own turpitudes, 
will you continue any longer to take them as your guides, your masters, your 
fathers in faith ? Hitherto you have only been taught to look upon them as ex- 
traordinary beings, endowed with sanctity, virtue, and all the gifts of heaven ; 
and with this persuasion, you felt proud to call yourselves their disciples and 
children. You now see your mistake ; you see what they were ; they have told 
it you themselves. Believe them upon this point, and it is enough to make you 
abandon them on all others, and to abjure, since you can do it, a descent that 
must from henceforth be so disgraceful and ignominious in your eyes. 

What could religion expect from such men? What profit could the world 
receive from their preaching? What actually were the effects produced? Here 
also they shall be our instructors. " The world grows worse and becomes more 
wicked every day. Men are now more given to revenge, more avaricious, more 
devoid of mercy, less modest and more incorrigible ; in fine more wicked than in 
the papacy."* 

" One thing, no less astonishing than scandalous, is to see that, since the pure 
doctrine of the gospel has been brought again to light, the world daily goes from 
bad to worse. "f 

" The noblemen and the peasants are come to such a pitch, that they boast and 
proclaim, without scruple, that they have only to let themselves be preached at, 
that they would prefer being entirely disenthralled from the word of God; and 
that they would not give a farthing fir all our sermons together. And how are 
w to lay this to them as a crime, when they make no account of the world to 
come? They live as they believe: they are and continue to be swine: they live 
like swine and they die like real swine.":}: 

Calvin, after declaiming against atheism, which was prevailing above all in 
the palaces of princes, and in the eonrte of justice* wild the first ranks of his 
ciiiniMuiiion. "There remains still (adds he) a wound more deplorable. The 

pastors, yes, the pastors themselves who mount the pulpit are at the present 

tine the most shameful examples of Waywardness and other vices. Hence their 

• Luther in Postilla sup. I. dom- advrnt. f Id- in Scrm. Conviv. German, fol. 55 * 
t Id. on the 1st Ep. to the Corinthians, xv. 



64 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

sermons obtain neither more credit nor authority than the fictitious tales uttered 
on the stage by the strolling player. And these persons are yet bold enough to 
complain that we despise tbeni and point at them tor scorn. As for me I ain 
more inclined to be astonished at the patience of the people : I am astonished 
that the women and children do not cover them with mud and tilth."* 

'• Those whom I had known to be pure, full of candor and simplicity (says one 
whom no one suspects) these have I seen afterwards, when gone over to the sect 
(of the Evangelicals) begin to speak of girls, flock to games of hazard, throw 
aside prayer, give themselves up entirely to their interests, become the most 
impatient, vindictive, and frivolous; changed in fact from men to vipers. 1 
know well what I say."t 

" I see many Lutherans, but few Evangelicals. Look a little at these people, 
and consider whether luxury, avarice, and lewdness do not prevail still more 
amongst them than amongst those whom fhey detest. Shew me any one, who 
by means of his gospel is become better. I will shew you very many that have 
become worse. Perhaps it has been my bad fortune; but I have seen none but 
who are become worse by their gospel. "t 

" Luther was wont to say that after the revelation of his gospel, virtue had 
become extinct, justice oppressed, temperance bound with cords, virtue torn in 
pieces by the dogs, faith had become wavering, and devotion lost."|| 

It was at that time a saying in Germany, expressive of their going to spend a 
jovial day in debauch: " Hodie lutheranke vivemus : We will spend to-day like 
Luther ans."§ 

'•And if the Sovereigns do not evangelize and interpose their authority to 
appease all these disputes, no doubt the Churches of Christ will soon be infested 

with heresies, which will ultimately bring on their ruin By these multiplied 

paradoxes the foundations of our religion are shaken, heresies crowd into the 
Churches of Christ, and the way is thrown open to atheism. "IT 

" Did any age ever witness persons of each sex and of every age give up them- 
selves, as ours do, to intemperance and the fire of their passions? (said one 

of the first witnesses of the reform). Men now receive as a divine oracle that 
saying of Luther's that it is no more possible for a person to restrain his desires 
than his saliva, nor more easy for man and woman to dispense with one another 
than for them to go without eating and drinking. Impossible, do you hear it 
sung on all sides, and in all tones, impossible not to sacrifice to Venus, when the 
time of life arrives."** 

"Do we not see at the present day (cries out another witness) youth even 
giving into debauch, and if they are withdrawn from it, loudly demanding to be 
married. The young women also, whether already fallen, or only as yet lasci- 
vious, are perpetually throwing in your face that impudent sentence of Luther's, 
that continence is impossible, seeing that Venus is not less necessary than eating ; 
according to the new fashion, children marry and from them no doubt are to 
spring the valiant champions who are to drive the Turk beyond the Caucasus."ft 

* Liv. sur ?rs scandales. p. 128. tErasm. Ejist. to the brethren of Lower Germany. 
J Id. Ep. a an 1528. !| Aurifaber, fol. 628, v. Florim. p. 235. § Fened. Morgenstern, 
Traite de I Eglise, p. 221. IT Sturm, Ratio ineunda c nrord. p. 2. an. 1579. •• Sylv. 
Czccanovius de corrupt, morib. tt Wigandus, de bonis et malis German. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 65 

" We are come to such a pitch of barbarity that many are persuaded that if 
they fasted one single day, they would find themselves dead the night following."* 
" It is certain that God wishes and requires of his servants a grave and Chris- 
tian discipline; but it passes with us as a new papacy and a new monkery. f 
We have lately learned (say the religionists of our times), that we are saved by 
iaith alone in Jesus Christ, without any other help than his merits and the grace 
of God." "And, that the world may know they are not papists and that they 
have no confidence in good works, they perform none. Instead of fasting, they 
eat and drink day and night, they change prayers into swearing ; and this is 
what they call the re-established Gospel, or the reformation of the Gospel, said 
Smidelin." 

•• We are not to be astonished that in Poland, Transylvania, Hungary and 
other countries, man}' pass over to Arianism and some to Mahomet; the doctrine 
of Calvin leads to these impieties." $ 

"Certainly, to speak the truth, there is much more conscienciousness and up- 
rightness among the greatest part of papists than among many protestants. 
And if we examine past ages, we shall find more sanctity, devotion, zeal, although 
blind, more charity and fidelity to one another, than is seen at present among 
us." || 

"Let them (the Protestants) I say, look with the eye of charity upon them 
(the Catholics) as well as severity, and they shall finde some excellent orders of 
government, some singular hclpes for increase of godlinesse and devotion, for the 
conquering of sinne, for the profiting of virtue ; contrariewise, in themselves, look- 
ing with a lesse indulgent eye than they doe, they shall finde, there is no such 
absolute perfection in their doctrine and reformation. "§ 

This is enough, without adding to these testimonies, those of Capito, Bucer, 
and Melanchton, who may find place in the following letter, and without tran- 
scribing here upon England what is told us by Strype, Camden, Dugdale, and 
even by Henry VIII in a declaration to his parliament. U 

Such then were the first fruits of the reformation! and such we learn them to 
have been from its authors themselves, from its promoters and its first witnesses.** 

• Melancht. on the sixth chapter of St. Matthew, t Jacob Andraus, on St. Luke, 
ch. xxi. 1583. fid. Preface contre l'Apol. de Danoeus. || Stubb's motive to good 
works, p. 43, an. 1596. 

5 A Relation of the state of Religion and with what Hopes and Policies it hath 
been framed and is maintained in the several states of the Western parts of the 
world. Sec. 48. By Sir Edwin Sandes, Printed London, 1605. U See Letters of 
Atticus, p. 64, 65. 3rd edition, London 1811. ** I hog the reader to make also the 
following remarks : It is a fact that, before the reformation, infidels wore scarcely 
known in the world : it is a fact that they are come forth in swarms from its bosom. 
It was from the writings of Herbert, Hobbes, fllouin, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, 
and Boyle, that Voltaire and his party drew the objections and errors, which they 
have brought so generally into fashion in the world. According to Diderot and 
d'Alembert, the first step that the untractable Catholic takes is to adopt the protes- 
tnnt principle of private judgment. He establishes himself judga of his religion, 
loaves it and joins the reform. Dissatisfied with the incoherent doctrines he then 
discovers, he passes on to the Socinians, whose inconsequences Boon drive him into 
Deism ; still pursued by unexpected difficulties, he throws himself into universal 
0* 



66 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Their confessions, their lamentations, wrung from them by the extent and noto- 
riety of the scandal, will eternally proclaim to the world, that with the reform 
w ere propagated vices and disorders ; that in the countries where it was adopted, 
and in proportion as it gained ground, devotions was seen to be weakened, piety 
extinguished, morals deteriorated laith gradually lost in the multitude, and even 
among the ministers themselves; so much so that to this day, in the cradle and 
centre of Calvinism, at Geneva, where they abound, you will scarcely find four 
or five, (1 know it for certain), who will consent to preach the divinity of our 
Saviour and teach it in their catechetical instructions. And yet there have been 
persons bold enough to hold out the progress of such a reform as a proof of the 
divine protection : as if we could acknowledge as its apostles such men as they 
have reciprocally described themselves to be : as if it could take parts in disor- 
ders, smile upon the propagation of vice, and favor the decaying of faith and 
Christianity. 

doubt, where still experiencing uneasiness, he at last resolves to take the last step 
and proceeds to terminate the long chain of his errors in Atheism. Let us not for- 
get that the first link of this fatal chain is attached to the fundamental maxim of 
private judgment. It is therefore historically correct, that the same principle that 
created protestanism three centuries ago, has never cea>ed since that time to spin it 
out into a thousand different sects, and has concluded by covering Europe with that 
multitude of free thinkers, who place it on the verge of ruin. 

When sects beget infidelity and by infidelity revolutions, it is plain that the po- 
litical safety of the states will only be secured by a return to religious unity. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 67 

LETTER III. 

On the Infallibility of the Church. 

We have just seen that unity in faith and government is an 
absolutely essential dogma, taught by Jesus Christ, by the apos- 
tles and their successors from age to age, recognized and set forth 
in all the Churches and in all the communions of the Christian 
world. When we are all of us, without exception, once agreed 
upon admitting the principle, we must of necessity be agreed 
upon admitting its immediate and necessary consequence, which 
is, that Jesus Christ has supplied us with some means of pre- 
serving and maintaining this unity. For, to oblige us all, under 
pain of damnation, to have but one baptism and one faith, to 
form of ourselves but one only body, one only Church, and to 
leave us without the means or the possibility of arriving at this, 
would be inconsistent with his providence and justice. Now we 
all know and we loudly profess that his providence and justice 
have never been wanting and never will be wanting to man. 
We are therefore all convinced that Jesus Christ has not left us 
without the means of being able to fulfil his great commandment. 
We have only therefore to examine what are the means appointed 
by him, in order that, following his direction and his wish, we may 
all with one consent have recourse to them, that we may adopt 
them with sincerity and attach ourselves exclusively to them. 

If each one of us were directed by an immediate revelation, 
a particular inspiration, there is no doubt that we never should 
depart from unity. But that this is not the means that provi- 
dence grants us no person, how enthusiastic or fanatic soever. 
can reasonably doubt. Every 'me sufficiently feels within him- 
self that he is nut supplied with this miraculous assistance. 

lint perhaps Jesus Christ may have left his doctrine to our 
private interpretation; perhaps it was his wish, that for the ex- 
planation of his dogmas ami the understanding of his law we 
should have no other guide but ourselves, no other judge to at- 



ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



tend to but our private opinion. If he had come to establish 
upon earth a variation in the belief, and a plurality in the gov- 
ernment of his Church, well and good : for we have already 
seen, and soon shall still more plainly see, that the liberty of 
interpreting just according to our fancy and of preferring and 
following our own conceits, is the infallible means of introducing 
disputes, quarrels, and discords, and of multiplying sects ad in- 
finitum : it is diametrically opposed to unity, and is therefore pro- 
scribed. We are under the necessity of looking out for another 
means, and we shall never find it except in a supreme authority, 
that speaks with a tone of authority, which presses equally upon 
all, which has the right to declare what is revealed and what is 
not, what we must believe, what we must reject: and which con- 
sequently, itself being secured from error, shall protect us from 
it, by subjecting us to her decisions. This is the powerful, the 
efficacious, the only means we can conceive capable of holding 
us together, circumstanced as we are. Without it, it is impos- 
sible we should ever be united ; with it, impossible we should not 
always be so : it has therefore been established ; we cannot doubt 
of it. It necessarily follows from the principle of unity as an 
effect belongs to its cause, and a consequence flows from its prin- 
ciples. Were there no scripture in the world, were there no mon- 
ument of primitive tradition, we should not on that account be 
less certain of the institution of this eminent and infallible au- 
thority, when once the necessity of being but one in belief and 
in communion is demonstrated to us. 

But, thank God, we have the Holy Scripture, we have the un- 
broken tradition of all centuries, since the preaching of the gos- 
pel, from age to age, down to our days; both attesting in the 
most authentic manner the positive institution of this authority. 

I l Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, appeared again at 
different times during forty days in the midst of his apostles and 
disciples, to console them and give them his last instructions, 
speaking to them of the kingdom of God, which without doubt 

The Holy Scripture. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 69 

means his church, and of its progress and its obstacles, of its 
combats and its triumphs, of the forma essentially necessary in 
its hierarchy and government, and of its unavoidable connections 
with the powers of the world. It was in his last appearance to 
them, that he announced to his apostles the termination of his 
mission and the commencement of theirs, when he solemnly ad- 
dressed them in these important words : ' All power is given me 

in heaven and on earth. Going therefore teach ye all nations 

teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have command- 
ed you : and behold I am with you all days, even to the consum- 
mation of the world.' 1 What an authority to go and instruct! 
Never was such given to man before. It comes to them from 
the Almighty himself, and subjects the whole human race to 
them. What security, what confidence is there not given to 
their teaching by this only word, I am with you! Go, fear no- 
thing : let men and devils rise up against you, their efforts, their 
illusions shall not prevail : I hold them under my hand : all power 
is given to me in heaven and on earth, and, by virtue of this 
power, from this moment I stand by your side, and shall unceas- 
ingly remain w r ith you, without the least interruption, even of a 
single day, to the end of time. A potentate may assemble his 
ministers, and say to them, Go, bear my orders to all my empire, 
inform my people of them : he has a right to do so, he can do it : 
But is there one who could say, Inform all nations of them ? 
Such a command could only come from him to whom the whole 
human race was subjected. And again, should this potentate 
have conquered the universe, would he presume to add: lam 
with you even to the consummation of the world ; he who is feeble 
and mortal as ourselves, he whose power expires with his life, 
and is buried in the same tomb with him ? This promise becomes 
Jesus Christ alone, and truly shews us what he is. He made it 
like a master; he keeps it like a god. ]3y this promise he se- 
cures his Church against all error in its doctrine, and ensures 
the perpetuity of its existence, and its indefectibility to the end 

"Matt XXV III. 18. 



70 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of time. Already has this promise preserved his Church against 
earth and hell for nearly two thousand years ; and this without 
doubt is sufficient to convince us, that it will support it even to 
the consummation of the world, come when it may. 

He had formerly said to the chief of. his apostles, when he 
took from him the name he had till then borne, to give him one 
that was symbolical and mysterious : ' Thou art Peter, and upon 
this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it" and to his apostles in general ; ' And I will 

ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete the 

Spirit of truth 2 When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he 

will teach you all truth.' 3 These passages are so clear, that at 
the first glance they must immediately discover to us the stability 
of the edifice he proposed to raise (an edifice not to be overturn- 
ed by all the powers of hell,) and the inadmissable purity of doc- 
trine in his church, with which the spirit of all truth is to reside 
for ever. 

I am not surprised that, intending the Apostles to represent 
him one day, and reserving for them a tutelary and continual 
assistance from on high, he should in the course of his preaching, 
have said to them, and also to the sixty-two disciples : ' He that 
heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth 
me.' 4 A simple expression this, but yet vigorous enough to put 
forth at one single stroke and in the highest degree, on the one 
side, the authority to teach, and, on the other, the duty to obey. 
After this striking and peremptory word : ' He who desjriseth you, 
despiseth me,' how are we to account for the blindness and im- 
piety of those Christians who afterwards had the face to despise 
this their doctrine ? we learn moreover from St. Matthew, 5 that 
our Saviour sometimes sent off the apostles to announce in the 
towns and cities of Judea, that the kingdom of heaven was at 
hand : ' And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your 
words ; going forth out of that house or city, shake off the dust 
from your feet.' And what shall be the punishment of those, who 

• Matt. XVI. 18. "John XIV. 16. » Ibid. XVI. 13. <Luke X. 16. *Ch. 
X. 14. 



AND THE REFORM ATION IN GENERAL. 71 

refuse the instructions of the apostles ? Let us hear it from Jesus 
Christ. Amen, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of Judgment, than for 
that city.' This oracle, proceeding from a Grod-man, is sufficient 
to terrify us. Let those consider it and apply it, who persist with 
their forefathers in shuttiug their ears against instructions and re- 
jecting the authority that has a right to instruct them. 

I know that, in their defeuce, they have said that these me- 
naces against the refractory on the one hand, and this absolute 
and infallible authority on the other, must be limited to the per- 
sons of the apostles and to the period of their ministry, and not 
be extended to their successors and to future ages. But that 
they may no longer attempt to persuade you of this,, remark well, 
I intreat you, the words by which the transmission of these same 
prerogatives and those same powers, and the perpetuity of them 
in the Church are forcibly declared. In fact, did not Jesus Christ 
say : ' I am with you even to the consummation of the world?' did 
he not say : ' The gates of hell shall not prevail against it ?' did 
he not say : ' The spirit of truth shall remain with you for ever V 
Tt is the apostles therefore in the first place, and in the succession 
of ages those, who were to succeed them in the plentitude of the 
priesthood, that he appoints as his ministers, his ambassadors, 
his representatives to continue and consummate his work . 

Let us never be afraid to repeat to ourselves ; it is glorious, 
it is profitable to contemplate in its origin the ministry it has 
pleased our Saviour to create and leave after him : for in this he 
truly appears as a Sovereign, as a God. He sends the ministers 
of his word as he had been sent, to whom all power had been 
given in heaven and on earth. "Whither does he send them ? 
To all nations : to every creature shall they bear his word, that 
is, as be himself explains it, all his commandments ; all, without 
restriction. But will they be heard? There is a command for 
all the world to receive them, au'l a prohibition under pain of 
everlasting and most rigorous torments, for any one whatsoever 
to despise them. And now, with this strict obligation on our 
part of submitting to their authority, it was the part of justice 



72 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

that there should not be the possibility of error or of deception to 
be apprehended from them: and accordingly never will hell be 
permitted to prevail against their instructions, and the Church 
which they have to establish ; the divine Spirit presides eternally 
over it, to teach it all truth ; and their doctrine, always incorrup- 
tible, shall be perpetuated from age to age, with the world for 
its boundaries, and time for its duration. Such is the command 
and the desire of our Legislator, to whom alone it belonged to 
command its execution. 1 

1 Never was an order so faithfully executed, never were instructions followed 
by so indefatigable a zeal. At first the Apostles preach in Jerusalem and in 
Judea. They speak with an authority that imposes and astonishes. Although 
poor, simple and modest, nothing intimidates them. The spirit, with which they 
arc animated, raises them above human considerations. To the little, to the 
great, before the people, before magistrates, in the synagogues, and the sanh >- 
drim, they deliver themselves with the same firmness, the same tone of confi- 
dence, of superiority, and supreme dominion. Assembled in council they hesitate 
not to pronounce in their own name, and in the name of God : "It hath ap- 
peared good to the Holy Ghost and to us." Thus do they write at the head of 
their decree. From Judea they spread themselves over the world : some pro- 
ceed straight to the centre of the empire and settle there; others to its principal 
towns; others penetrate to its utmost extremities, some even beyond, and reach 
as far as India. 

Every where do they announce the kingdom of God, every where do they es- 
tablish the government that Jesus Christ had traced out for them, and which in 
their turn they again trace out for their disciples, with an injunction to transmit 
it to their successors. The divine master had said to them : — " Teach all nations 
to observe whatsoever I have commanded you:" and St. Paul says to the inhabi- 
tants of Miletus and Ephesus: "I take you to witness this day I have 

not spared to declare to you all the counsel of God." * 

He had told them that he should be with them to the end of ages, which ne- 
cessarily supposes an unbroken chain of successors: and in all places where the 
word fructifies they establish bishops. "Take heed to the whole flock wherein 
the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the Church of God." J They 
confer upon them the powers with which th >y themselves are invested, with an 

injunction to transmit them in their turn: " I left thee in Crete that thou 

shouldst ordain bishops in every city, as I also, appointed thee a bishop 

must be without crime." % 

Jesus Christ had said to them : " As my Father hath sent me so do I send yon." 
and they carry themselves as his ministers : Let a man so account of us as of the 
ministers of Christ ;"|| and again, "For Christ therefore we are ambassadors 
God as it were, exhorting by us." § Undoubtedly the ambassadors of such a 

•Acts xx. 26. t Ibid. 28. 1 Titus, i. 5. || 1 Cor. iv. 1. §2 Cor. v. 20. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL; 73 

It seems to rae impossible for any one, who is not obstinately- 
blind, not to recognise in the Testament of our Saviour on the 
one hand, the establishment of a spiritual authority, always 
guided by the spirit of truth in every thing pertaining to revela- 
tion, and consequently incapable of leading us astray in the doc- 
trine attributed to it ; and on the other hand, the duty of submis- 
sion and obedience to the instructions belonging to this authority. 
We are certain (for it would be blasphemy to doubt that a God- 
man would fulfil his promise) we are certain that this infallible 
doctrine, whatever changes take place in the affairs of the world, 
will never depart from his Church. As to obedience and sub- 
mission they never will cease to be a duty. But the observation 
of this, as well as all other duties, depends upon the free will and 

master forcibly felt the dignity of their character and knew how to assume the 
language belonging to it. " These things speak, and exhort and rebuke with all 
authority. Let no man despise thee." * 

And because authority falls away where obedience ceases, the apostles had 
been admonished, that they were, in case of refusal and opposition, to shake the 
dust from oft" their feet, and that the refractory would be treated more severely 
than Sodom and Gouiorrha. The apostles also warned the faithful of the sub- 
mission they owed to their bishops: — "Remember your prelates, who have 
spoken the word of God to you; whose faith follow." f And you, Sir, remem- 
ber here your supreme governess expelling the bishops, who were preaching the 
word of God, rejecting, instead of following their faith. 'Obey your prelates 
anJ be subject to them." % Gall to your mind, moreover your ancestors of 155S, 
and all those, who elsewhere called themselves reformers and reformed. 

Jesus Christ had said to his apostles: "He that heareth you, heareth me; and 
he that despiseth you, despiseth me." And the apostles, sanctioning by the same 
motive the deference they required of the first faithful to the instructions of their 
bishops: "Ho that despiseth (said they) these things, despiseth not man, but 
God, who also hath given his Holy Spirit in us." || What a contrast between 
the submission and respect commanded by the scripture towards bishops, and the 
insubordination and contempt of the reformers towards one another. We will 
not here repeat the painful narrative of it — both you and I have too often heard 
it. But let us at least learn from scripture, what conduct they ought to havo 
adopted. They should have had recourse to the successors of Peter, to the suc- 
cessors of the apostles, and to them they should have addressed the same lan- 
guago that Cornelius, his family and his friends formerly addressed to Peter. 
" Now therefore, all we are present in thy Bight, to hear all things whatsoever 
are commanded thee by the Lord." § This is what the respect enjoined by the 
scripture commanded them to do ; you know what they did do. 

• Titus, ii. 15. f Heb. xiii. 7. {Ibid. 17. ||Thes.iv.8. §Actax.33. 



74 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

liberty of man. What is certain and as clear as the light of the 
aim, is that all those who fulfil this duty of obedience to the in- 
structions of the spiritual authority, can never be divided, when 
once this authority has spoken. What is certain and as clear as 
the sun, is that by their submission to its word it must necessa- 
rily follow, that they remain united together in the same Church 
and the same faith. The authority given by Jesus Christ to his 
apostles and their successors is therefore the means that he has 
established, and that we were looking for, to conduct to him, to 
cement in one body and in one and the same belief, the people 
of all nations, of all countries, and of all ages. 

And in fact, that such actually was the intention of our divine 
Legislator, we learn positively and in distinct terms from the 
apostle St. Paul. The passage I am going to quote from his 
epistle to the Ephesians, deserves your particular attention. 
' And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some 
evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfec- 
tion of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying 
of the body of Christ that henceforth we be no more chil- 
dren tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of 
doctrine, by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness by 
which they lie in wait to deceive.' ' St. Paul, you see, here re- 
veals to us the interior thoughts of Jesus Christ, his wish, his 
positive intention in giving us his apostles, and after them the 
bishops, often designated by St. Paul under the name of pastors, 
doctors, and priests. For what reason did he establish their 
ministry? To assemble his saints from all parts of the world, 
and by their union to raise the edifice of his Church and his 
mystical body. And how long was the ministry of the pastors 
to be continued? Until all people drawn by their teaching be- 
come members of this great body, and meet successively in the 
union of faith to the end of the world. Thus the flocking to 
the same Church, adherence to the same body, agreement to the 
same faith are the effect, the aim, and object of the ministry es- 
tablished by Jesus Christ. 

" Ch. ir. 11. 12. 13. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 75 

The conclusion of the passage confirms what has been said in 
a still more forcible manner. For, following two metaphors of 
St. Paul, Jesus Christ has given us the ministry of the pastors , 
in order that, being strengthened by their instructions, we may 
not float about in uncertainty, like children who, when left to 
themselves, go as chance leads them to the right or to the left 
without knowing where to direct their steps ; and that ' we may not 
be tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.' 
The doctrine of our conductors is for us, therefore, a solid and 
weighty anchor. Let us hold fast to this anchor, and let the 
winds, and tempests, and the waves work their pleasure. We 
shall undoubtedly, be always agitated, but never shall we be 
drawn away. The immovable anchor will firmly keep us within 
sight of port, and uniformly directed among ourselves towards 
one and the same centre. As for those, who being deceived by 
the artifices and seductions of some individuals shall withdraw 
from, this powerful support to follow them, you will see them be- 
come the sport of the winds, having no longer any guide but 
their own fancy, always uncertain on a rough ocean, wandering 
from error to error, and, in the confusion of opinions, not know- 
ing what course to steer, some disappear at last under the waves, 
and others rush distractedly into a labyrinth of endless errors. 
This is the history of the Church and of all the sects that have 
separated from it ; and St. Paul's doctrine is found to be correct 
by the experience of eighteen hundred years. 

2. ' But if in the small number of writings that we have upon 
the preaching of our Saviour and of his apostles, we find such 
manifest proofs of infallibility, how much more striking and more 
multiplied proofs must they have had, who had the happiness to 
hear Jesus Christ, and, after him, his disciples, explain them- 
selves upon this important article! We knew that the sacred 
writers have given but a very succinct account of what was said 
and dune by our Saviour and by themselves. St. John 8 goes 
BO far as to declare that if they desired to give the full detail, 
tke world would scarcely contain the books that must be written. 
1 Tradition of the first ages. " Gospel. Last verse. 



76 ON TIIS CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

These words that we road upon the promises made to the Churches 
should therefore be regarded as some straggling evidences. 
They arc sufficient indeed to command our belief; but they must 
have been more repeated and more developed by the living voice 
of Jesus Christ. In fact, by imposing upon some the obligation 
"f teaching, and on others that of hearing, he must necessarily 
have guaranteed all against the danger of deceiving, or of being 
deceived. By enjoining them above all things to preserve unity 
among themselves from one end of the world to the other, Jesus 
Christ must strongly have insisted upon the only means which 
would keep them together, and in their turn the apostles must 
have repeated it over and over again in every place to which 
they carried the word of the gospel. They must have explained 
to the bishops, as they establish them, that the right and obliga- 
tion of instructing would in all ages attach to the episcopal body 
of the Church : that decisions made by it should become for the 
people a rule of faith, manifest and at the same time unshakea- 
ble, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is even to be supposed 
that the apostles would have carried their solicitude so far as to 
explain the manner in which they might one day have a mutual 
understanding and act in concert with one another, according to 
the circumstances in which it should please heaven to place 
the Churches, in the exercise of their authority and the promul- 
gation of their doctrine. These considerations convince me, 
that, of its own nature, the dogma of infallibility must have 
been, a dogma the most clearly known from the first times of the 
Church. Nevertheless I make no difficulty in confessing that 
we do not discover so many traces of it in the three first ages as 
in those that follow. They are not, however, devoid of them, 
and some of them you shall be made acquainted with. If they 
are not to be found so frequently, beside that there remain but 
few monuments of these distant times, I shall moreover give 
you two particular reasons for it. Whatever certainty there 
■ should exist, at that time, that from the concurrence of the 
bishops there would result an infallible opinion, there was no 
necessity of having recourse to it to condemn heresies so evi- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 77 

dently contrary to faith, as were those of the first ages, that we 
know not which to be most astonished at, the audacity or the 
extravagance of their authors. It was a most simple and easy 
thing for every teacher to refuse such opinions on the ground of 
their manifest opposition to the doctrine just established by the 
apostles. The whole of the first age was filled with their dis- 
ciples ; the second possessed many of them, and those who were 
not had been for the most part instructed by the immediate suc- 
cessors of these disciples. Thus the world was still echoing with 
the voice and doctrine of the apostles : the remembrance of them 
was fresh and present to the minds of the faithful. Their seats, 
to use the expression of Tertullian, still spoke : it was sufficient 
in those times to say to the innovators ; ' ' The apostles taught 
not so ; they wrote not so : your doctrine is not theirs ; this is 
the first time we have heard such ; it is false, it is impious." 
The second reason is the impossibility there existed during the 
fire of persecutions, for the bishops to assemble and to pronounce 
decisions in common, and to give at that time to the world splen- 
did proofs of their authority. In those days of researches and 
of blood, there were no other means of meeting novelties but 
by private condemnations, in which, nevertheless, the bishops 
discover to us unequivocal traces of their opinion of their in- 
fallibility. Every one who then thought proper to dogmatise, 
to gain credit for his foolish ideas, was marked by the diocesan 
bishop, who admonished him of his error, charitably reproved 
liim, refuted, threatened, and at last condemned him. The affair 
then passed from one to another, and according to the facility of 
cirrimistances to the neighboring bishops, to those of the province, 
to those of the apostolic Churches, and with more eagerness and 
deference still to him, who presided upon the eminent chair of 
the prince of the apostles. 

For the greater part of the time it was from this principal see 
that the condemnation came, which from the centre of unity 
reached in every sense to the farthest extremities. The bishops 
adhered to it by a consent either expressed or tacit, and their 
separate approbations formed in their great rc-union, the irre- 



78 ON THE CIIURCH OF ENGLAND 

fragable decision of the dispersed Church : the dogma was set- 
tled, and the refractory innovator from that time marked out to 
all the faithful, as he would be in our days after a similar sen- 
tence, under the disgraceful name of heretic. Thus in the sec- 
ond age were Saturuinus, Basilides, Valentinus, Carpocrates, 
Cerdo and Marcion, condemned and stigmatized as corruptors 
of the faith. 1 

In less stormy periods, and when the Church had a respite 
under milder and more humane Emperors, the bishops assembled 
together, as far as circumstances permitted, and pronounced au- 
thoritatively upon whatever belonged to faith. We learn this 
from the following very remarkable passage of Tertullian : ' ' Ac- 

1 It would be an historical error to imagine that the Churches were then iso- 
lated, without communication together, and unknown to one another, whereas 
from their very origin they tended to nothing but to be united together, being 
mutually known and of support to one another. Call to mind the circumstances 
of Fortunatus going to Rome to implore the authority of the Pope in the dis- 
turbance that had commenced at Corinth ; of Clement, who sends him back with 
four deputies to labor in re-establishing order and peace ; of Polycarp going in 
person, at his advanced time of life, to confer with the pope Anicetus upon mat- 
ters of discipline; of Ignatius writing seven epistles to different Churches during 
the long rout, which conducted him to martyrdom, and begging of them to send 
trusty priests to his Church at Antioch to console it on his absence, and soon, on 
lis death. The following is the address of a letter written on occasion of the 
martyrdom of Polycarp, as found in Eusebius. " The Church of Cod which is 
at Smyrna salutes all persons of the holy Catholic Church spread throughout the 
world." In the year 1G6. Eusebius has moreover preserved for us the letter of 
the Churches of Vienna and Lyons to the Chinches of Asia and Phrygia on the 
martyrdom of Pothinus, Attalus, of Sabina and their companions, in 177. Even 
from the time of the apostles, a correspondence was opened among all the 
Churches and was frequent. St. Paul praises the Romans, " because their faith 
was spoken of in the whole world, * and because their obedience was published 
in every place." % He begs them to salute his fellow-laborers, Prisca and Acquila, 
who had for his life laid down their own necks, to whom not only he gave 
thanks, but also all the Churches of the Gentiles. X From Asia Minor, St John, 
according to ancient tradition, addressed his first epistle to the Parthians, who 
were so remote from him and out of the Roman Empire. St. Peter wrote to 
the Christians of Pontus, Gallatia, Cappadocia, of Asia, Bythinia, and in fine, to 
all the faithful of the dispersion. St. James and St. Jude addressed their epistles 
to all the dispersed tribes, to all those who preserved themselves in God and in 
Jesus Christ. 

* Ch. i. 8. t Ch. xvi. 10. 1 Ibid. 4., 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 79 

cording to a prescribed ordinance, from all the Churches, there 
are in certain places of Greece councils assembled, in which the 
most important affairs are discussed publicly in common; and 
tins representation of the whole Christian name obtains amongst 
us the greatest veneration." 1 Eusebius, speaking of the first 
ages, observes, "that, at the birth of heresy, all the bishops of 
the world rose up to extinguish the fire." 2 The ambitious Mon- 
tanus aspires to pass for the paraclete promised by Jesus Christ. 3 
He seduces, by the austerity of his manners and of his precepts, 
and by the imposing style of his prophecies. The bishops of 
Asia assemble frequently at Hierapolis, 4 and, after much precau- 
tion and a long examination, pronounce the prophecies of Mon- 
tanus to be false and profane, as also those of Priscilla and Maxi- 
milla, who had left their husbands to join the extravagances of 
the impostor ; they condemn their doctrine and their errors, and 
cut them off from the communion of the Church. 

In 255, when peace was restored to the Christians under the 
Emperor Gallus, many of those who had fallen in the late perse- 
cutions demanded the peace, and the communion of the Church, 
and were received into it, after having undergone the rigors of 
the public penance. Novatian, a priest of a stern and harsh 
character, is indignant at the condescension that is shewn to 
these weak and cowardly creatures, maintains that absolution 
cannot be granted to those, who have fallen into idolatry, and 
separates from Pope Cornelius, whose see he even desires to 
usurp : a synod of sixty bishops condemns him at Rome, and 
expels him from the Church. 

Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch in 262, to draw to the 
Christian religion Queen Zenobia, attempts to reduce the myste- 
ries to intelligible ideas, and attacks the mystery of the Trinity, 
by denying the divinity of our Saviour. The bishops of the 
province take alarm, flock a second time to Antioch, condemn the 

1 Treatise on fasting, ch. XIII. It is to the councils here made mention of by 
T rtullian, that the learned IJcvcridge, with as much sagacity as correctness, 
attributes the most ancient apostolic canons. See bis opinion on the apostolical 
canons, No. 8, in Cotelier, t. 1. p. 430. 2 Eccle iast. Hi tory, book II. ch. XXV. 
i In the year L31 ondec Marcos Amelias. ' In 181 under Comwodus. 



80 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

errors of Paul, depose him from his see, and with one voice ex- 
communicate him. Paul, under the protection of Zenobia, 
obstinately persists in not quitting bis see, until such time as 
Aurelian, becoming master of Antioch, ordains that the episcopal 
residence shall belong to him, to whom the bishops of Rome 
address their letters; judging, adds Theodoret, that he, who 
submits not to the sentence of those of his religion, ought to have 
nothing more to do in common with them. 

These examples, to which others might easily be added, prove 
that from the first ages the bishops pronounced decidedly upon 
what pertained to faith, declared what was revealed and what 
was not, cut off from the Church those who refused to obey them, 
and exiled them among heretics and infidels, by pronouncing 
anathema upon them. And it was not because these men had 
taught erroneous doctrines, but because they did not submit to 
the authority of their ecclesiastical superiors, because they per- 
sisted in their opinions after they had been condemned and raised 
themselves as contumacious rebels against the decision of the 
bishops. ' The proud and the contumacious are struck unto 
death, by the spiritual sword (said St. Cyprian), when they were 
cut off from the Church.' 1 Now to inflict spiritual death on 
proud spirits, and to devote the contumacious to eternal damna- 
tion, it was necessary that the bishops should know all their 
rights, that they should be convinced they could not be mistaken 
in their decisions ; it was necessary that they should be assured 
that Jesus Christ was with them, that the spirit of truth never 
would abandon them, and that, according to the order of their 
master, whoever did not hear them, deserved to be treated as a 
heathen and a publican. Far from suspecting these venerable 
bishops, of not knowing their authority, one would be much 
rather tempted to accuse them of having exaggerated it, and ex- 
tended it beyond its bounds, by attributing to their scanty synods 
an infallibility which had only been given to the entire body of 
bishops. But it must be observed that the opinions it con- 

1 ?' Spiritual) ^ladio superbi et contuaiaces nDcantur, dum de ecclesia ejiciuL-^ 
lur." Ep. LXH. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 81 

demned in these first synods, had already been condemned by the 
apostles; that, perhaps also, this small number of assembled bish- 
ops knew to a certainty the doctrine of their absent brethren, 
and that at all events, the acceptation of these would take place 
in due time, and conclude by adding to the weight of the synodi- 
cal sentences the last seal of infallibility. ' 

1 Eusebius * teaches us that the council of Antioch, after having condemned 
1'aul of Samosata, addressed a synodical letter to Dionysius, bishop of Rome: 
to .Maxituus, bishop of Alexandria; to all the bishops, all the priests and all the 
deacons of the world, and to the whole Catholic Church under heaven. 

"The faithful who were in Asia (says Eusebius again) assembled many times 
and in many parts of Asia, and, having examined the doctrine of Montanus, they 
condemned it; on which account these heretics were driven from the Church and 
deprived of Catholic communion." "One might be surprised" observes the 
learned Thomassin, f'that Eusebius, after saying that the Montanists were con- 
demned by all the Catholic Churches, is satisfied with proving this by the coun- 
cils that were held in Asia But the Churches of Asia were living in commu- 
nion and in perfect understanding with the other Catholic Churches of the world; 
they had been informed that these revolters were equally displeasing to the other 
Churches as to themselves. The silence of the other Churches confirmed the ex- 
amination and decision of the Churches of Asia." 

"Pope Cornelius wrote a letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, in which he in- 
formed him what resolutions had been agreed to, by the council and by all the 
bishops of Italy and Africa, besides those of many other provinces. They had 
also published the letters of St. Cyprian and of the other bishops of Africa who 
were assembled." % 

St. Alexander, after having assembled a council at Alexandria, in which Arius 
and his first adherents were condemned with unanimous voice, wrote to all the 
bishops a synodal letter, of which Theodoret has preserved us a copy. He lays 
open the proceedings and the doctrine of his council. Among other things he 
says, " We all profess one only Catholic and apostolic Church, always invincible, 
although all the world conspire to make war upon it, and victorious over all the 
impious attempts of the heretics, placing her confidence on the word of the Fa- 
ther of the family, Take courage, I have conquered the world." And now see how 
he concludes. "Condemn them with us after the example of your brethren, 
who have written to me and subscribed to the note which I sent you together 
with their letters. There are some from all Egypt, from Thcbais, from Lybia, 
I'entapolis, Syria, Pamphylia, Asia, Cappadocia, and the neighboring provinces. 
I am expecting to receive similar letters from you; Cor after man] other iiH'di- 

chiee, 1 am led to think that the agreement of the bishops could complete the 

cure of those whom they have led astray." || 

II.- seat these decrees to all the Churches, and from their unity they acquired 

• Book vn. t Traiie dogma, et hint, rim moyetu doni on tfesi tervi -pour maintenii 
I'unitc dans tous lis temps. Ch. II. Art. 7. \ Ku: ebius Book VI. on Novalian. 
|| Athan. I. Vise against Arius. 



82 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

The facts I have just adduced speak for themselves. The 
bishops have displayed their authority in all its possible extent ; 
the faithful have recognised it by complying with the sentences 
passed upon the heretics, with whom they ceased from that time 
to hold any communication. Thus the usage and the practice 
of the primitive Church sufficiently prove that the dogma of in- 
fallibility was recognised in it. "We see, moreover, in the few 
writings that are come down to us from these times, that the fa- 
thers considered this dogma as a truth generally established. 

Let us return to the beautiful epistles of St. Ignatius, of 
which I spoke in my preceding letter. ' While among you, I 
loudly called upon you and said: Be united to the bishop. 1 
Avoid divisions as the source of evils : all of you follow the 
bishops, as Jesus Christ follows his Father.' 2 You see the 
episcopal authority marked out as the means of preserving unity 
— ' I bid you farewell in Jesus Christ, Be submissive to the 
bishops and the priests, according to the command of God. * 
I exhort you to do every thing in divine concord, the bishop 
presiding in the place of God." 4 It is still to the episcopal 
chair that he attaches the bond of unity. ' You must concur 
with the aid of the bishops, as you do ; for your worthy priests 
are in harmony with them, like the chords of a lyre, and your 

union forms a wonderful harmony Take care, therefore. 

not to resist the bishop, that you may be subject to God; 

for all those whom the Father of the family sends for the gov- 
ernment of his house, you ought to receive as you would him 
that sends them,' 5 We will not press the words of St. Ignatius 
so far as to conclude that he attached infallibility individually to 
each bishop. Those of whom he speaks were personally known 
to him. He knew that their doctrine was pure and conformable 

their final strength. This ia the remark of Bossuet upon the dicisim just ad- 
duced in the synod of Alexandria against Arius. Hint, of the Variation*. Book 
VIL Art. 69. ' 

i To the Philadelphia™. 2 To the Christians of Smyrna. 3 To the Christiana 
of Tralles. 4 To the Christians of Magnesia. & To the Ephesians. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 83 

with the universal doctrine ; that union reigned between them 
and the priests, between them and all those whom the Father of 
the family had sent for the government of his house. Now this 
unity would have ceased, immediately that a bishop taught any 
dogma contrary to the received doctrine of the Church, as we 
Lave seen in the case of Paul of Samosata, condemned and de- 
posed by his brethren. Thus, then, when we come to analyze 
the matter, we find, that it was upon the conformity with the 
general doctrine of the bishops, that St. Ignatius founded, on 
the one hand, the particular authority of each bishop, and, on 
the other, the entire submission he required to be paid to them 
by the people ; and, by a more remote consequence, it appears 
necessary, according to his principles, that the doctrine of the 
great majority of the bishops must have been infallible, other- 
wise the faithful, by conforming themselves to the bishops ac- 
cording to the command of God, might have been drawn into 
error, without any means of being preserved from it. In a word, 
if we understand the doctrine of this great man, he teaches us 
that the unity of the Church depends upon the submission of the 
faithful to their particular bishops, and on the agreement of the 
bishops among themselves, that is to say, that the supreme au- 
thority given to the body of the bishops is the safeguard of unity. 
"We find the same doctrine taught one hundred and forty years 
afterwards by the illustrious doctor and martyr of Carthage. 
' The Catholic Church is one,' wrote St. Cyprian, ' and the bish- 
ops joined together are the bonds of this union.' ' These few 
words comprise the whole subject of this and the preceding let- 
ter: they give you in abridgment the entire theory of the unity 
and the infallibility of the Church. ' 

Fifty years before St. Cyprian, Irenams, 3 a disciple of St. 

' Ep. XXXIII. '"There is but one episcopacy spread on all sides in many 
bishops united together." Cyprian, in his h'/>. in AiiIikHhiiiik, bishop of Africa, 
Bod again, in his book On Unity; "The Catholic Church is united in all its 
parti and consolidated by the cement (glutino) of the bishops adhering to one 
another. We, who are bishops and who preside in the Church, we ought par- 
ticularly and more closely to embrace and defend this unity. s Born in 120, 
martyred under Marcus Aurelius in 203. 



84 ON THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

John through Polycarp and Papias, and, after the martyrdom 
of St. Pothinas, second bishop of Lyons, wrote his great work 
Upon Heresies. Hear what he says in Book IV. ch. XLIII : 
' For this reason we must obey those who preside in the Church, 
who hold their succession from the apostle, as we have shewn, 
and who, with the succession of the episcopacy, have received 
the certain grace of truth, according to the good pleasure of the 
Father.' Where the certain grace of truth is found, there, as- 
suredly, no error is to be apprehended: and there, of course, 
must be found infallibility. And again in the XLV. chapter of 
the same book, speaking of the successors of the apostles, he 
adds : ' It is they, who preserve the faith that we hold of God 
alone, who made all things ; they who expound to us the scrip- 
tures, without danger of errors.' Let us then boldly follow their 
exposition of scripture, confident as we are with St. Irenaeus, 
that we can never go astray, while we follow their steps, nor fall 
into error, while we adopt their interpretations. 

Tertullian, 1 so celebrated for his writings, and above all for 
his excellent book on the Prescriptions against the heretics, ad- 
dresses them in the following ironical strain. " Well ! then, for 
your satisfaction, we will suppose that all the Churches have 

fallen in error ! not one of them has been looked upon by the 

Holy Spirit ; not one directed in truth by the Spirit which Christ 
had sent, and which he had asked of his Father to be for his 
people the teacher of truth ! This agent of God, this vicar of 
Christ has then we will suppose neglected his ministry, by per- 
mitting the Churches to think and believe otherwise, than he had 
himself announced to them by the mouth of his apostles." Ter- 
tullian observed in this passage that, according to the heretics, 
it would follow that all the Churches had fallen into error, because 
they all were agreed upon the articles, which the heretics reject- 
ed. He sets off the absurdity of such a supposition, by introdu- 
cing the perpetual assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to the 
Church by Jesus Christ. It was his belief therefore that the 
Church was always guided in the truth by the Holy Spirit, and 
I Hied in 210. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 85 

under its influence always secure from error : and this his belief 
was founded upon the same reason and the same promises that 
have induced the belief of it in all Christian ages before and after. 

If I have prolonged the discussion of the three first ages, it is 
because they are in general less known, because it was necessary 
to shew that the promises of Jesus Christ, being then more re- 
cent, must on that account have been more lively in the remem- 
brance of men; because the bishops who illustrated the rising 
Church were well acquainted with the rights and obligations of 
their ministry, and because, to discover with more splendor the 
dogma of infallibility, with which their minds were profoundly 
impressed, nothing more was wanting in those times than the 
appearance of favorable circumstances. These circumstances 
did at last appear when Providence called Constantine ' to the 
throne, and seated religion on it with him. Soon were the 
bishops of the whole world beheld assembling at Nice, 2 where 
the doctrine of Arias was solemnly condemned and banished. 
The doctrine of Macedonius was afterwards treated in the same 
manner at the general council of Constantinople, 3 that of Nes- 
torius at Ephesus : 4 that of Eutychites at Chalcedon. 5 It would 
be superfluous to mention all the oecumenical councils that dis- 
tjaguished the following ages up to the council of Trent. Let 
but an attentive observation be made of the circumstances, and 
motives which caused the convocation of these councils, the man- 
ner of proceeding adopted by the fathers in them and the recep- 
tion their decrees met with in the world, and it will be perceived 
that iii all ages there prevailed a general persuasion that the 
ejueopal authority was the means instituted by Jesus Christ to 
preserve unity among all his disciples, and that the opinions 
adopted by the majority of the bishops are for all an infallible 
rule of faith. It would be tedious to pursue in detail this ex- 
amination of the councils: let us confine ourselves to that of 
Nice. 

Arias, being condemned by a synod at Alexandria, makes 

1 In 306. Proclaimed afterwards at Rome, by the Senate, first Augustus, SrfS. 

■In 326. Mnllftl. 'In 431. ■• In i.M. 



86 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

his complaint to several bishops in other parts, explains to them 
liis principles, declares, his submission, implores their light ami 
assistance, succeeds in making himself some friends, some pro- 
tectors and a great number of proselytes : his cause soon becomes 
alarming on account of the seditions, tumults, and murders which 
it occasions. Constantine endeavors to apply a remedy to it, but 
fails in his attempt. In the mean time, the flame is still on the 
increase, and the Emperor, together with the bishops whom he 
consults, sees no other means of extinguishing it, besides the 
authority of a general council. He convokes it at Nice. Upon 
the news of this, the minds of men become calm, parties relent, 
each one flatters himself that he shall soon see his cause triumph, 
and remains at peace in the expectation of the definitive decision 
to be pronounced at Nice. Hither assemble from Europe, Africa 
and Asia, patriarchs, metropolitans and bishops, to the number 
of 318, and in their attendance a great number of doctors, and 
at the head of all, the celebrated Osius of Cordova, as proxy for 
Sylvester, the head of the Church. Arius is cited to appear — 
many of his partisans were there already. He comes in person 
to give an account of his opinions. You see, so far the universal 
opinion well proved. Every thing bows before the authority that 
is going to pronounce sentence. Arius and his party pay hom- 
age to it, and submit beforehand. The august and venerable 
senate opens its sessions, Constantine appears in all his imperial 
pomp. I pray you, remark this passage, in the answer he gives 
to an harangue that had just been addressed to him in the name 
of all the fathers. ' The rage of division spreading through the 
minds and penetrating the hearts of men, excites them one 
against the other, troubles peace, ruins faith by rendering it 
uncertain, fills the country with disorder and tumults, and after 
all this, exposes religion to the contempt, the ridicule, and the 
blasphemy of our adversaries (the pagans), who take occasion 
from thence to tear it in pieces. To remedy so great an evil, I 
have thought nothing to be so powerful as the whole Church 
acting with authority in this holy assembly that represents it." 1 
1 Eusebius, Sozoiv.on, Tliecxioret, Nicephorus. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 87 

The first business, the council entered upon, was that of Arius. 1 
It sets about it with that maturity and wisdom that was to be 
expected from so great and learned an assembly, in which also 
were sitting a great number of confessors of the faith, mutilated 
in the persecution of Licinius and covered with scars, which Con- 
stantine kissed with respect. Arius and his doctrine were 
unanimously condemned, the consubstantiality of the Word re- 
e ignised and fixed to the immortal symbol, which is still to this 
day repeated by all Christians. The fathers of Nice, at the end 
of their labors, addressed a synodal letter to all the Churches 
under heaven, to notify their decisions and to offer them to the 
acceptation of all the Bishops in the world. In it they say ; 
' that with one voice it had been resolved to anathemize Arius 
and his impious doctrine.' They had already presented the 
decree of his condemnation to the Emperor, 2 who had received 
it with the highest veneration as if it had been drawn up by 
heaven itself and had been sent to him on the part of God; he 
added, that whoever would not submit should be banished as a 
rebel to a divine decision. This menace reduced to obedience 
Arius and the fautors of his doctrine, who till then had refused 
to subscribe to the decision of the council. Constantine after- 
wards dispatched two letters, one encyclical, addressed to the 
Churches in general, the other to the Church of Alexandria, 
where the heresy had first appeared. In the first are found these 
words: ' Whatever is done in the councils of the bishops ought 
to be considered as the will of God.' And in the second, after 
enumerating the tumults, discords, and schisms that the heresy 
had produced, he adds: 'It was in order to put an end to all 
these that, by the will of God, I assembled so great a number of 
bishops at Nice.' And at the conclusion: What three hundred 
bishops have ordained is nothing else than the sentence of the 
only Sun of God: the Holy Spirit has declared the will of God 
1'V means of these great men, whom he inspired. Therefore let 
do one doubt, let no one delay; but all of you return in good 

'Bee the HivtoirecU I'Arianieme, Liv. 1. Maimbourg. s Ru(inus, Gelasius. 



88 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

earnest into the way of truth.' 1 Before he dismissed them, he 
re-assembled the bishops in his palace, where he delivered to 
them an excellent discourse to recommend to them the peace of 
the Church, which they would preserve by preserving inviolably, 
amongst themselves, a perfect union of mind and heart, in unity 
of doctrine and sentiment, conformably with what the Holy 
Spirit had just established by their means in the council. 2 

Eusebius, of Cesarea, 3 who a long time opposed the word 
consubstantial, afterwards wrote the life of Constantine, in 
which he praises his indefatigable zeal to secure the superiority 
of that salutary faith, which the Holy Spirit himself had truly 
promulgated by the holy fathers assembled at Nice. 

After the condemnation of Arius, they examined the question 
of the paschal solemnity ; all the fathers agreed to observe it on 
the same day, and the orientals promised to conform to the prac- 
tice of all the other Churches, that is to say, of Italy, of Africa 
of Lybia, of Egypt, of Spain, G-aul, Britain, Greece, Asia, and 
Pontus. ' The council of Nice,' says Athanasius, in his apology, 
has been doubly useful, because the people of Syria, Lybia, 
Mesopotamia, had not been accustomed to celebrate the pasch on 
the proper day, and because the Arian heresy had arisen against 
the Church. The Catholic world assembled in council. The 
day of the pasch was regulated for all, and Arianism was con- 
demned. It is true that for the day of the pasch they used these 
terms, it hath seemed good to us, after the example of the apos- 
tles, in order that all the world may obey — but to regulate faith 
they said : the Catholic Church believes : and immediately they 
add the entire confession, to shew that it was not a new doctrine, 
but that of the apostles, and that what they had put down in 
writing was not their own invention but derived from the apostles.' 

But if afterwards Arius and some of his adherents retracted 

1 Thus it was that the decision of the council was proposed as a divine oracle, 
utter which there was nothing more to be examined; for we are not to doubt 
that these letters of the Emperor were dictated by the bishops, or at least drawn 
up according; to their instructions. This is the reflection made by the judicious 
Floury, after introducing the letters of the Emperor. His. Eccles. t. p. 159. 
edit, in 4to. i Hist, de Arianisme. s Euseb. Sozom. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 89 

their word and the obedience they had sworn, the passions, inci- 
dent to men explain this perjury but too well; we should doubtless 
lament it, and deplore the fatal consecpiences it produced upon 
tiie unfortunate reigns of Constantius and Valeris. But it is 
enough for our present purpose to know that Arius and his parti- 
sans had recognised this authority before it explained itself; and 
that they themselves had afterwards submitted to its decision, 
and that they did not venture to revolt against it for a considera- 
ble time after their condemnation. "With regard to the other 
bishops in various parts, who had not been able to assist at the 
council, they almost all applauded its decrees : the most enlight- 
ened doctors took up the defence of them, as soon as they were 
called in question, and generally all nations conformed to them. 
The Nicene Creed, already adopted by the universal Church, 
was for the second time universally proclaimed at the council at 
Constantinople, and there received the additions made necessary 
by the heresy of Macedonius against the Holy Ghost. From 
the sixth age, it was publicly recited in the Greek Churches, 
according to the ordinance of Timotheus, patriarch of Constanti- 
nople ; sung in the Churches of Spain, according to the form of 
the Oriental Churches, by the decree of the council of Toledo: 1 
in Gaul and Germany towards the end of the eighth century; 
towards the year 1014, in all Italy, by the constitution of Bene- 
cRci VIII. ; in fine it has been kept by the reformation; and in 
our days it is still held in honor among almost all protestant 
communions. 

And to say a word upon the individual opinion of the most 
celebrated doctors of the Church, the learned Euscbius of Ce- 
sarca, who, in the council, held out a long time against the term 
consubstantial, was nol on that account prevented from writing 
afterwards, * thai the Holy Spirit himself had truly promulgated 
the faith, by the instrumentality of the fathers of Nice. He 
had already reckoned among the evils inflicted by Licinius on 
the Church, the prohibition to assemble councils. ' For,' adds the 

historian, ' important controversies Can never be terminated with- 
' in the life el Con tantine. 



90 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

out a synod." We know with what strength, spirit and eloquence 
Athanasius supported during a struggle of 50 years, against the 
Seuiiarians, the decisions of the council of Nice. Threatened 
with exile when in his see, and with death in his exile, he evinced 
the same courage, and had not less credit at the extremities of 
Gaul, at Treves, than in Egypt, and at Alexandria. From all 
the places, to which he was constrained to take refuge, he com- 
hated with unshaken firmness that heresy armed as it was with 
the power of two Emperors, and many times in synod carried 
off in triumph the formula of Nice ; as the rule of the orthodox 
faith. 2 He calls it the word of God, the divine and sacred oracle 
of the Holy Spirit. ' What can be wanting to the council of 
Nice that we can desire further ? The Indians are not ignorant 
of it, and all the Christians of barbarous countries revere it. 
The word of God, who has spoken by this oecumenical council, 
will remain for ever.' See now how he commences the profession 
of faith, which the Emperor Jovian had demanded of him in 
363, after the agitated and unfortunate reigns of Constantius 
and Julian. ' Know then, Emperor, that the faith, which 
the fathers of Nice have acknowledged, is the faith that has been 
preached from the beginning ; know that it is followed by all the 
Churches of the world, whether in Spain or in England, in Gaul, 
in all Italy, in Dalmatia, Dacia, Mysia, Macedonia, and all 
Greece, in Pamphylia, Lycia, Isauria, Egypt, Lybia, Pontus 
aud Cappadocia. To these we must add all our neighboring 
Churches, as well as those of the east, except a small number, 
who are in the party of the Arians. We know all those whom 
we have just named and others still more distant : we even have 
letters from them.' 'Cyril of Alexandria expresses himself of 
the fathers of Nice with the same veneration. ' Truly, with them 
was Jesus Christ, who said, when two or three are gathered to- 
gether, there am I in the midst of them, for how should we be 
permitted to doubt that Jesus Christ himself invisibly presided 
over this great and holy assembly.' St. Hilary, St. Basil, and 
St. Jerome hold the same language. St. Ambrose, 3 whose scnti- 
•Ecclca. Ilis. B. T. c. LI. Ep. to the Bishops of Africa. 3 Ep. xxxv, Lib. v. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 91 

ments ought to be discoverable in every Christian heart, hesitated 
not to declare : ' I embrace the decrees of Nice, from which 
neither death nor the sword shall separate me.' Saint Augustine 
calls it ' the council of the world, whose decrees are equal to the 
divine commandments.' Speaking of the error of Saint Cyprian 
Upon rebaptization, he says, that ' tbis holy martyr would have 
adhered to the decision of the Church, if the truth had been 
cleared up and declared in his time by a general council,' 1 as it 
afterwards was at Aries and Nice. From these principles, which 
are also ours, this great man concluded in another passage, as 
we also conclude with him, ' that disputes may be tolerated be- 
fore the matter is decided by the authority of the Church, but 
that to dispute after such decision, is to root up the foundation 
of the Church itself.' 2 

Pope Leo declares that, ' ' they could never be reckoned among 
Catholics, who would not follow the definitions of the venerable 
synod of Nice, or the regulations of the great council of Chalce- 
doB." 3 "I declare, wrote Gregory the Great, that I receive 
and venerate the four first general councils, as the four books of 
the holy gospel." 4 Socrates, who wrote his ecclesiastical history 
a century after the council, says, that "the fathers of Nice, al- 
though for the greater part simple and unlearned, could not fall 
into error, because they were enlightened by the light of the 
Holy Spirit." 5 

It would certainly be very easy, were it not long and tedious 
to produce here many other passages which the writings of the 
Cithers of the Church furnished upon this subject. You will 
perhaps be more pleased to learn that the authority of the fathers 
of Nice has found defenders even amongst the reformers. The 
most learned and the most moderate protcstant theologians have 
i lade no difficulty in submitting to the decisions of the four first 
ral councils; and upon that of Nice hear how, amongst 
oth is. Bull, bishop of St. David's one of the most skilful divines 
©f your English Church, expresses himself. "In this council 

'I!. II. lv. on Bapt, 'Serm. .\iv. <k verb apott. 3 Ep. Ixxviii. ■'B. I. Ep. 
ttiv. 1!. I. ii. 



*)2 ON THE ClIURCH OF ENGLAND 

was discussed one of the principal articles of the Christian Re- 
ligioa, (the divinity of Jesus Christ.) If upon a leading article 
we can imagine that all the pastors of the Church could have 
fallen into error and led the faithful astray, how shall we he ahle 
to defend the word of Christ, who promised his apostles, and in 
their persons, their successors, to he always with them?' a promise, 
which would not be true, since the apostles were not to live long, 
were it not that their successors are here comprised in the persons 
of the apostles." 1 You see the infallibility of the council of 
Nice here recognized by the learned bishop of St. David's as 
r sting on the firmest foundation, the promises of Jesus Christ, 
whose word shall never pass away. The reasoning of Dr. Bull, 
is the reasoning of antiquity, of all the fathers, and of the 
Church at all times. It might and it ought to have led him to 
the Church, and yet did not do it. A deplorable example this 
of the tyranny, that the prejudices of education and the misera- 
ble interests of the world exercise over even well disposed 

minds. 2 

What T have been saying on the circumstances, preceding, 
accompanying, and succeeding the first general council, ought, 
one would imagine, to be sufficient to convince you that before 
and after this assembly, as well as during its sitting, it was 
the general persuasion that infallibility had been promised to the 
Church, to maintain unity of doctrine and government. You 
have seen the motives that induced the bishops to desire its con- 

i Defence of the Nicene Faith, pref. No. 2. p. 2. 2 During my residence in 
England, there fell into my hands a very voluminous collection of notes upon 
Ecclesiastical History. They were loose and superficial, indicating much reading 
bat little learning. The author, who called himself a theologian, alluding to 
the passage above quoted, evinces much spleen against the learned bishop. He 
observes, nevertheless, and with more reason than he appeal's to think, that with 
such principles upon the authority of the Church, Bull ought to have taken a 
bold step, and finished the business by passing over to the Church of Rome. 
There is not loss justness in this observation, than truth in the doctrine that gave 
rise to it. Happy would have been both the critic and the bishop, had the former 
1 sarned the principle from the latter, and had both been blessed with courage 
enough to follow up its consequence! This author, whose light notes have left 
but few traces iu my mind, is called, to the best of my recollection, Doctor Jortin. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 93 

vocation, and the Emperor to effect it You have seen all 
parties acknowledging beforehand ""the authority of the great 
council, and prepared to submit to its decisions. You have 
heard of the illustrious testimonies, that have since been given 
of it; its formulary of faith applauded throughout the world, re- 
ceived as coming from heaven itself; celebrated in hymns, in the 
solemnities of worship, and in the Liturgies ; engraven upon the 
memories of all the faithful, and repeated from age to age, from 
one end of the world to the other, by every Christian tongue. 
As to the opinion which prevailed among the fathers of this 
council, whatever distrust they might individually have had of 
their own lights, there was undoubtedly not one of them, who 
did not remember the promise of Jesus Christ, and who upon 
his word, was not convinced that the spirit of truth hovered in- 
visibly over the assembly to direct its decisions. You have al- 
ready heard one of those who sat among the judges of the faith, 
Eusebius of Cesarea, and also Athanasius, who had the honor 
of accompanying Alexander, his patriarch, to the council, and 
of distinguishing himself by his erudition and eloquence. There 
will be no necessity for recurring here to their testimonies. The 
anathemas pronounced by the council will suffice. They plainly 
shew an entire confidence of infallibility. A society that does 
not possess it, and that from its own confessing may be sur- 
prised into error, might indeed exclude from its bosom those who 
should refuse to conform to its laws ; but to denounce to execra- 
tion, to devote to eternal malediction, and to deliver up to satan, 
these who would not receive its decisions, this goes far beyond 
the rights and the power of man; it belongs only to a society, 
eonvinoed that it possessed an extraordinary privilege, and which, 
reeling itself under the protection and direction of the Holy 
Spirit, is firmly persuaded that, with such a guide, it cannot err 
in its decisions. 

Moreover, this principle of authority, so solidly established 
by tradition and holy scripture, gains greater strength, when 
SOntrasted with the principle of the reformation. It is evident 
that this would never have gained ground, any more than any 



91 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

other heresy before it, if it had submitted itself, as it should 
have done, to the authority that condemned it. It'was obliged 
to commence its operations by rising up in revolt against that 
authority ; and it was necessarily obliged to labor, in the first 
place, to overturn the rampart, which alone would have arrested 
its progress, and which till that time had been generally held in 
the world to have been established by Jesus Christ himself. The 
reformers therefore were continually repeating to the people, that 
all men were subject to error; and that no man, nor assembly 
of men, could arrogate a claim to infallibility; that it was the 
attribute of God, that the scripture, inspired by him, alone 
shared it with him ; that the scripture alone was the rule of our 
fuith, sufficiently clear, at least in every thing essential, for each 
one to understand it, to decide from it between good and bad 
doctrine, and thus form his religion according to his conscience. 
Let us pause a little on this principle, which substitutes private 
judgment for the uniform doctrine of the episcopal body. 

The scripture alone, the rule of our faith ! The scripture suf- 
ficiently clear and intelligible to all minds ! Begin then by 
teaching men how to read. Three fourths of mankind cannot 
read, or they read so imperfectly that they hesitate at every 
word. Such are laborers, artificers, and those condemned to 
gain their bread by the sweat of their brow ; who have neither 
the ability nor the time, nor the instruction necessary for 
learning. 

The scripture alone, the rule of our faith ! sufficiently clear 
and intelligible to all minds ! In the Acts of the apostles ' we 
read as follows, "Philip rising up went: and behold a man 
of Ethiopia, a Eunuch, of great authority under Candace, the 
Queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge over all her treasures, 
had come to Jerusalem to adore. And he was returning sitting 
in Ins chariot, and reading Isaias, the prophet. And the spirit 
said to Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot; and 
Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias, 
and he said, Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou 
»Ch. VIII. v 27. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 95 

readest ? "Who said, and how can I, unless some man shew me !' 
Put, in these days, the scriptures into the hands of all those who 
know how to read, and ask the greater part. Do you under- 
stand what you read ? If they are as honest as the Eunuch of 
Candaoe, they will answer you together with him; How can we 
unless some man shew us? 

The scripture alone, the rule of our faith ! sufficiently clear 
and intelligible to all minds! And how comes it then that the 
sublime reformers, those even who were the first to make the 
scriptures the oidy rule of our faith, have never been able to 
come to an understanding upon the sense of this same scripture? 
How comes it that Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, and those sprung 
from them, could not manage for their lives to agree together? 
T should not so soon finish, where I to enumerate all their dif- 
ferences. Here is a specimen: "It is clear from scripture, 
B tya Zuinglius, that we receive only bread and wine in the sa- 
crament. You deceive yourself, replies Calvin, it is clear from 
scripture that the true body and true blood are present; not in the 
sacrament, but to him that worthily receives it. You neither of 
you understand any thing about it, exclaims Luther, stepping in 
ii them, you are two asses ; you hold this doctrine from 
the devil. It is clear from scripture, adds he in a more sub- 
due 1 ton ■. thai nre must accuse the Holy Spirit of lying, or be- 
lieve that ill- sacred body and blood of Christ are truly and 
really present in the sacrament, as well as for him that receives 
ii.' [f the scripture is so clear and intelligible, how do you 

I rant, I say, for their eternal disputes? and how came the 

reformation by following one and the same guide, to go astray 
in so many different directions? 1 Often have they endeavored 

i <• ii fa of great importance (wrote Calvin to Melanchton) that there should 
not be transmitted to lu a picion of th i divisions that exist amongst 

ii : [or ii i- beyond imagination ridiculous, aft ir having quarrelled with all the 
world that we should agree so little a nong ourselves from the very commence- 
ment of our reform." * II- was Bpeakinghere of the disputes upon the sense 
of ill- won / i body. 

Luther spoke still better, on the same subject: "If the world is to last muob 

* C'alv. Epilt. ad Melanchton. p. 115. 



96 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to rally, often have they endeavored to conciliate all parties by 
some general and well drawn up formulary ; but as yet it has 
been all to no purpose. To facilitate so desired a reconciliation, 
some have since conceited that they found superfluities in the 
gospel, and reduced it to what is simply necessary, to funda- 
mental points : as if Jesus Christ had taught useless dogma or 
precepts; as if he had ordered his apostle to teach all nations, 
to observe all things whatever he had commanded them, 1 and 
had not told them that the Holy Ghost should teach them all 
things; 2 as if St. Paul had not protested to the Christians of 
Miletus and Ephesus, that he had declared to them all the 
counsel of God and had not spared to do so ; 3 and as if St. 
James had not written, 'Whoever shall keep the whole law, but 
offend in one point, is become guilty of all !' 4 And still, even 

longer, I do declare, considering all these different interpretations of the scrip- 
ture, there is no other means remaining for us to preserve the unity of the faith, 
than that of receiving the decrees of the councils and taking refuge under their 
authority." * He therefore ultimately felt the necessity of unity in faith, and 
the impossibility of effecting it without the supreme authority of the Church ? 
Is it possible that after two hundred years more of experience, protestants should 
not be still more struck with, and convinced of the justness of this reflection? 

Melanehton and Chatillon, stupified with the confusion of ideas that prevailed 
among them, declared the former, " that it was well enough known whom to 
avoid, but not whom to follow ;" the latter " that he doubted very much whether 
truth was or was not on their side." 

"But in fine, in what a situation are our followers?" exclaims Duditius : 
"dispersed, agitated by every wind of doctrine, carried away from one side to 
to another. What is their opinion in religion to-day, you may, perhaps, ascer- 
tain ; but what will it be to-morrow, it is impossible to conjecture. In what, I 
pray, do all those agree who make war upon the Roman Pontiff? Run over ail 
their articles from the first to the last, you will see nothing advanced by any one 
of our teachers, but it is immediately exclaimed against by another as an impiety. 
They make themselves a new creed every month, menstruum fidem habent."^ 

" The papists object to us our dissentions : I confess we cannot sufficiently 
deplore them. I confess, also, that the simple are troubled at them, so far as no 
longer to know where is the truth and whether there still remains for God a 
Church upon earth." % 

" Nothing brings so much discredit on our gospel, as our internal dissensions." || 

i St. Matt. XXVIII. 18. « St. John, XIV. 26. 3 Acts, XX. 26. <Ch. II. 10. 

* Luther against Zuinglius and (Ecolampadius. t In the Theological Epistles of 
Beza. p. 13. JGeorgc Major, on the confusion of dogma. || Melanch. con*. Thcolg. 
p. 249. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 97 

after all their arbitrary restrictions, or rather, sacrilegious re- 
ductions, they are no better agreed upon this small number of 
fundamental points. l Surely, were it only from shame of their 
disputes and intestine divisions, their eyes should at last be opened, 
and so long an experience should have convinced them that the 
principle from which they started, is only calculated to swell the 
learned with pride, and to bring into action and opposition the 
passions of men. It is not the spur but the rein that is wanted 
for the learned and the proud ; they stand no less in need of a 
guide than the illiterate; and the wisdom of our legislator ap- 
pears splendidly in this, that both were equally subjected to the 
yoke of the same authority, that both may be held in the unity 
of the same doctrine. 

Let us therefore conclude, Sir, that scripture alone, far from 
being a rule of faith common to all mankind, cannot even be so 
for any particular class of man : not for that of the learned, who 
have hitherto made no other use of it than to lose themselves in 
interminable deputes upon many important matters; not for the 
greater number of persons, who, although able to read, are un- 
able to understand ; not for the class of ignorant and simple 
men and women so general in the world, to whom letters are 
totally unknown. Let this be the only rule under heaven, and 
all the doctors of the world shall consume their days in learned 
dissertations, in- obstinate and fruitless quarrels about the sense 
of the scripture ; and men of ordinary education shall go out of 

1 "Where is the man, said a Calvinist, * who can decide to the satisfaction of 
nil. what are the dogmas necessar] for salvation and what precisely are sufficient? 
1 would t;ik ■ such a one to be a great prophet." J 

An tli >r Call inistic author, in his book on the re-union of Christianity, had 
Written, '• thai others who seemed to have had in view this general reconciliation, 
lii' I n"t. sufficiently distinguished whai is fundamental from what is not so." 
'1 he equally Calviniatic author of tin- Remarks upon this work, makes an obser- 
vation upon this passage, which also is worthy of notice ; What (says he) is 
this man thinking ot ".' Does he imagine that it is so easy a thing to agree upon 
\\h;it is fundamental and what is not so? Has it not hitherto been an iTuur- 
tiOiitUabU difficulty." % 

• Amalil. Polenburg in prtrst uiror. rp. tSoe Vrejugu legitime! de M. Nicole, 
p. 898. ; Nicole Pregugi ■ legitimes centre let Calviniitei, p. 358. 



98 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

life without ever knowing what to hold of all they have read ; 
and the multitude of the ignorant and simple, because they can- 
not read, shall be condemned never to know Jesus Christ ! But 
it is not so : and this misfortune is much more to be feared for 
the learned than for those little ones, whom the world despises, 
and whom Jesus Christ has preferred for the uprightness and 
simplicity of their soul : he loved them too much not to put him- 
self within their reach and be known by them. ' I confess to 
thee, O Father,' did he exclaim in an effusion of tenderness for 
them, ' because thou hast hid these things from the wise and the 
prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.' 1 

Suppose a legislator, a founder of an empire or republic, with- 
out troubling himself about creating magistrates and tribunals, 
were to deliver a code of his laws into the hands of his people 
and say to them ; ' Take, read and interpret my laws yourselves : 
they are clear and intelligible. Above all, let there be no more 
law suits, but let fraternal love, concord, and unity dwell among 
you all ;' would not this be an admirably contrived republic ! 
And what would follow from this admirable and novel regulation? 
In the first place, three parts out of four, not knowing how to 
read and having no time to lose, if they are to get a living, 
would throw the code aside, and care nothing about its contents. 
The others would read in it whatever their interest might make 
them desirous of finding. And then commenting upon the text 
at pleasure, no one would be wrong; each one without contra- 
diction would have the law on his side. Thus, cavils and dis- 
putes without end or measure, implacable hatreds, irritated 
hearts, would prevail through the four epiarters of the empire. 
The making such an hypothesis, is a folly that stares us in the 
face. Away with it to some other world if you like ; it certainly 
belongs not to ours. Accordingly never was there a legislator 
who did not institute magistrates with supreme authority ; never 
a founder of an empire who did not feel how essential they were, 
to interpret the sense of the law, to apply it to all particular 
cases, to maintain the security of property, and persons, that is, 
1 St. Matth. xi. 25. Luke, x. 21. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 99 

to decide as a supreme tribunal upon objects as frivolous and 
transient as are their proprietors, upon interests of dust and dirt; 
and yet there are men who would have Jesus Christ, he who 
knows the heart and its folds, man and his silly passions, his 
restless curiosity, his rage for singularity, for pre-eminence, for 
making himself a name among creatures and followers ; he who 
knows the ignorance and the incapacity of the multitude, and 
who notwithstanding has chosen to mis them together under the 
same law, and of all the people in the world to make but one 
nation of brethren ; there are those, I say, who would have Jesus 
Christ to have been devoid of ordinary foresight in the Church 
of which he is King, in his plan of universal concord, on which 
the souls redeemed by his blood, and their happiness for time 
and eternity was at stake. 1 

The reformation began by telling men ; ' Take reason for the 
guide and the judge of your belief,' and thus at once men were 
dubbed Logicians and theologians. Discord soon appeared among 
them, scattered divisions in their debates, and produced, with 
unceasing and inexhaustible fecundity, rival and jealous sects, 
who could agree in nothing but in doing their utmost to demolish 
One another, always attacking the youngest with increased fury, 
without perceiving that in their blind rivalship, the edifice must 
:i - lit decay and crumble, and bury them all under its ruins. 
Before the reformation, and as long as the voice of the spiritual 
guides were followed, all was firm and compact: one and the 
same creed was common to all: one and the same doctrine was 
preached and heard through the vast empire of catholicity. Let 
good Dense decide between these two conditions of mankind. Let 
us judge of the principles by their effects. The principle of 
Catholics is found by experience, to be the b f .nd of peace and 
harmony: that of protestantism, the source of trouble and dis- 
eord ; the former unites mankind and would make of the world 
one family of brethren; the lattei separates them, and would 
continue eternally to parcel out mankind into hostile parties. 

1 "Godliness i- profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now to, 

and of that which ia to coinu." St.. Paul, 1. E/j to Tim. iv. 8. 



100 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

The principle of authority, so analogous to our nature, is there- 
fore also the only one in conformity with the will of the divine 
legislator, since he incontestably proposed to unite his adorers 
of all nations and all ages. You then, who have hitherto been 
so much taken with this liberty of discussing matters of faith, 
frankly acknowledge with us, that this liberty is demonstrated 
to be anti-christian, since instead of assembling together, it in- 
fallibly disperses. 

Again, the reformation said at its commencement : ' Man is 
subject to error, and infallibility is the property of Glod alone.' 
So far we are agreed : and when we grant this prerogative to 
bishops united together, we are far from considering it inherent 
in their nature, which resembles our own : we derive it from 
heaven and from its promise. We take it as a favor, a pure 
gift, which Jesus Christ has condescended to bestow upon them 
for our advantage, in order that we may no longer be abandoned 
and fluctuating children, but may be conducted by a steady and 
paternal hand. As for you, who reject both the promises and 
gifts of your Saviour, you, whoever you be, reformers or re- 
formed, Lutherans or Calvinists, Anglicans or Presbyterians, 
Methodists, Anabaptists or Socinians, you who acknowledge that 
the society of which you are members aspires not to this privilege 
from on high, you who acknowledge that it may err and draw 
you into error, how can you without inquietude continue and 
terminate in such a Church your mortal pilgrimage ? How is it 
you are not afraid of all going fatally astray ? How can you 
walk on with a safe conscience, when by your confession, your 
steps are not secure ? Your whole society might go astray, you 
Bay : it is not then the church to which Christ has said the gates 
of hell shall never prevail against her. 1 Your society might go 
astray ; it is not then the Church to which Christ gave the ad- 
mirable and consoling assurance, ' Behold I am with you all 
days, even to the consummation of the world.' 2 It might go 
astray; it is not then the Church to which is addressed the 
magnificent promise of its divine founder : ' I will ask the Father, 
»Matth. xvi. 18. *D*id. xxviii. 20. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 101 

and he shall give you another paraclete, that he may abide with 
you for ever : who will teach you all truth. 1 It might go astray ; 
it is not then the Church of the living God, 2 the pillar, and 
ground of the truth P It might go astray ! What then is become 
of those apostles, pastors, and teachers, who, by divine institu- 
tion, shall always direct the Church, shall fix it in faith, that it 
may not be carried away by every wind of doctrine ? Acknow- 
ledge, Sir, that your ancestors are here visibly shewn, by their 
own principle, to be cut off from the body of Jesus Christ. 
Thoy have renounced the promises and rejected the gifts he made 
to his followers ; they are no longer his : they have ceased to 
belong to him : and thus you are declared, by your own mouths, 
to bo strangers to his Church, from the time that you have 
estranged yourselves from the privileges with which he has been 
pleased to invest it. 

But attend to another consequence from the same principle, 
which will astonish you, and which, I confess, surprised me 
much, as soon as I discovered it. You remember all we have 
said in this and the preceding letters upon the authority of teach- 
ing in the governors, on the duty of submission in the governed, 
and on the enormity of heresy and schism. Now, Sir, with the 
glorious principle of the reform, all authority disappears in su- 
periors, all obedience in the faithful: there is no longer such a 
thing as heresy or schism ; or, if you please, heresy and schism, 
which the scripture and all antiquity describe as the blackest of 
all crimes, are found from henceforth in the rank of lawful ac- 
tions, quite harmless and innocent. In fact, when once you re- 
eognise no other rule of faith but the scripture, when once you 
grant to each one the right of interpreting it according to his 
own lights, it is most evident that I only use my right when I 
adopt that interpretation which appears to me the most reasona- 
ble. What ! you think it extravagant! Be it so, to your heart's 
(■'intent; you think so, and I do not oppose you: permit me 
also, together with yourself, t<» exercise my rights. Yes, but 
you run straight in the face of the doctrine generally received ! 
1 St. John, xiv. 10. xiv. 13. *Ep. to Tim. 3. 16. * .... 



102 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Very well ! What have I to do with the opinion of another ? 
Speak not to me of authority ; I am emancipated from it. Ex- 
ample is not my rule ; reason is my only guide : and so long as 
I have no new lights upon such and such a question, I must hold 
to the opinion I have chosen. But, you will say again, this 
very choice and this perseverance in the choice, precisely con- 
stitute heresy. Indeed ! then I will be a heretic ; you will be 
one when you please ; and all others in the same manner : there 
will no longer be any but heretics in the world, because all 
having equally the right to choose, each one will preserve the 
opinion that appears to him preferable. And more than this, 
if amongst all the Christian societies that exist, I find none of 
my opinion, I shall, in virtue of the same right, form a society 
apart ; let those join in who please : if nobody fancies it, I shall 
remain alone, and my Church will be entire wherever I am 
myself. ' 

Perhaps, in your eyes, I may appear to invent absurd hy- 
pothesis, for the purpose of laying unjust accusations against the 
reform. Not at all, Sir ; and if you take the trouble to go back 
to its birth, or to consult the works of the most celebrated lati- 
tudinarians, 2 you will see that I only act the part of an his- 
torian. The first reformers and their emissaries, dispatched 
from all parts to propagate their doctrine ; had flattered them- 
selves that by filling the world with furious declamations against 

1 1 remember to have read, somewhere, that a Mr. Johnson, an Englishman, 
had in his house, at Amsterdam, a Church composed of four individuals, and 
that it was soon divided and reduced to two, because the said Johnson excom- 
municated his father and brother, who on their part also excommunicated him. 

• Among others, Strimesius, Belgius, and other professors, both of the Uni- 
versity of Francfort on the Oder, and of the Academy of Dusburg in the Duchy 
of Cleves : Jurieu and his partisans in Holland ; Cartwright, Chillingworth, and 
Burnet, in England. Papin, who was a long time attached to their principles, 
ultimately became frightened at their consequences; he saw that they must ab- 
solutely open the Church to the Socinians, and even extend salvation out of 
Jesus Christ. He stopped at the brink of the abyss; and there, measuring all 
its terrific depth, and afterwards fixing his eyes upon the divine and infallible 
authority of the Church, he acknowledged it, humbled himself before it, and 
ca;ne to surrender himself up to Bossuct. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 103 

the pretended tyranny of the pope and the bishops, they would 
insensibly substitute themselves in their place, and would draw 
to themselves all the consideration and authority they would 
succeed in withdrawing from them. The illusion did not last 
long, and there was no necessity for waiting much to be con- 
vinced in what their noble experiments terminated. All those 
who hud given into their ideas had set themselves to comment 
upon the scriptures, to search them, to compare passages, to 
reason upon the old and new testament : for they had been at 
great pains in preparing versions of them in different languages, 
each being seasoned to the taste of the translator, and according 
to the opinion that he wished to bring into repute. 1 

The rage for controversy had then gained all states and con- 
ditions ; the courtier and the magistrate, those engaged in the 
profession of arms, and those immersed in business; females 
even, particularly those, who prided themselves on their wit and 
learning, all must meddle with theology. The monk, tired of 
his cell, threw aside his habit, gained his liberty, and proceeded, 
like a good protcstant, with edifying zeal to dictate to the suc- 
cessors of the apostles : the village schoolmaster did not think 
himself less clever than the new ministers. In vain did these 
latter remonstrate against such presumption : very soon they 
listened no more to them : no one understood how to obey : all 
claimed their rights, their independence, and that liberty of the 

1 Luther made a version of the scripture into the vulgar language.* Zuinglius 
after having examined it, publicly announced that it corrupted the word of God. 
The Lutherans said the same of the version of Zuinglius. (Ecolampadius and 
the theologians of Bile, made another version: but, according to the fatuous 
Beza, it was impious in many parts i the divines of Bile said the same of Beza's 
version. In fact, adds Dumoulin, another learned minister, ho changes in it the 
text of scripture ; and .-peaking of Calvin's translation, he says, that Calvin does 
violence to the letter of the gospel, which he has changed, making also additions 
ill' bis own. The ministers of Genera believed themselves obliged to make an 
exact rersion, but James I. King of England, declared in the conference at 
Hampton Court, that cif all tin; versions it was the most wicked and the most 
unfaithful. 

* The learned Emser, doctor of Leipsick, discovered in it more than a thousand 



104 on the church of England 

children of God, that had been so much extolled to them from 
the beginning. Thus the arms with which the ministers had 
overturned the legitimate authority of their superiors, were 
turned against themselves. They had advanced from liberty to 
licentuousness and anarchy, each one pulling his own way, 
shaping the Church to his fancy, inventing and forging doctrines 
according to his inclination. ' The authority of the ministers is 
entirely abolished; all is lost, all is going to ruin. There is no 
Church among us, not even a single one, in which there is dis- 
cipline ; the people tell us boldly; You wish to act the 

part of tyrants in a Church that is free ; you wish to establish 
a new papacy.' ' God gives me to know what it is to be a pastor, 
and the wrong we have done to the Church by the precipitate judg- 
ment and inconsiderate vehemence that has induced us to reject 
the pope. For the people accustomed, and as it were trained to 

licentiousness, have entirely thrown off the rein ; they cry 

out to us : I know the gospel well enough ; what need have I of 
your assistance to find Jesus Christ? Go, and preach to those 
who are willing to hear you.' 2 Bucer, Capito's colleague at 
Strasburg, made the same confession, in 1549, and added, that in 
embracing the reformation they had sought for nothing so much, 
' as the pleasure of living in it according to their inclination.' 3 
Myco, the successor of (Ecolampadius in the ministry at Bale, 
indulges in the same complaints: ' The hues attribute every thing 
to themselves, and the magistrate has created himself into a pope.' 4 
And the peaceable and unfortunate Melanchton, who spent half 
his life in lamenting the part in which he had been engaged, and 
died without having sufficient courage to abandon it ; ' The Elbe, 
(wrote he in confidence to a friend,) 5 the Elbe with all its waves 
could not funrish tears enough to weep over the miseries of the 
distracted reformation.' ' You see the violence of the multitude 
and its blind desires,' wrote he again to his friend Camerarius. 
So much excess, so many crimes, which were daily committed 
iu the reform, at last opened the eyes of the leaders upon the 

1 Capito, Buccr's colleague at Strasburgh, writing to his friend Farrell. fcfifi 
Ep. Culv. p. 5. ' Ibid. p. 509, 510. * Ibid. p. 52. * Lib. II. ep. 202. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 105 

principles which they had at first put forward, and made them 
understand that they must change both their method and their 
language. Blinded creatures ! not to have known sooner, that 
to destroy, there is nothing more required than that enthusiasm 
and intoxication to which the multitude is so prone ; whereas 
when they wish to rebuild, they know not in what manner to 
bring back to order and subordination the minds that have been 
once infatuated with their religious independence ! However 
that may be, the reformers employed for this purpose all the 
resources of their mind, the credit they enjoyed with princes, 
and the little control they still retained over the people. See 
with what ardor poor Melanchton set himself about it : ' Would 
to God, would to God, said he, that I might be able, not indeed 
to conform the domination of the bishops, but to re-establish 
their administration ! for I see what kind of a Church we are 
going to have, if we overturn the ecclesiastical government. I 

see that tyranny will be more insupportable than ever 

"What will be the condition of the Church (continues he) if we 
change all the ancient customs and there be no longer any fixed 
prelates and conductors ?" ' 

' Our brethren blame me because I give jurisdiction to the 
bishops. The people accustomed to liberty after having once 
shaken off the yoke, are unwilling to receive it any more, and 
it is the towns of the empire that hate this dominion the most. 
They do not trouble themselves about doctrine and religion, but 
only about power and liberty.' 2 

Some time after this, it appears that the ministers and the 
principal person's of the party struck in with his opinion: for 
instead of saying, our brethren blame me, he says now : ' Our 
brethren are agreed that the ecclesiastical mode of government 
by which bishops are recognised as the superiors of many 
Churches, and the bishop of Rome superior overall the bishops, 
is permitted. It has also been permitted to kings to give reve- 
nues to the Churches : so there is no dispute about the superiority 
of the pope and the authority of the bishops; and the pope as 
1 Book III. cp. 101. s Book I. ep. 17, addressed to Luther. 



106 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

well as the bishops may easily preserve this authority. For the 
Church stands in need of conductors to maintain order, to have 
an eye over those who are called to the ecclesiastical ministry 
and over the doctrine taught by the priests, and to exercise ec- 
clesiastical judgments : so that, if there were no bishops, we 
must needs make them. The monarchy of the pope would also 
tend very much to preserve agreement in doctrine among many 
nations. Thus we should easily agree upon the superiority of 
the pope, if we were agreed upon all the rest, and kings might 
themselves easily check the encroachments of the pope upon the 
temporalities of their kingdom.' 1 What reflections do this pas- 
sage, and many others which I could produce, occasion on the 
irresistible force of experience and truth, which oblige men to 
recognise the principles which they themselves had overturned. 
3Ielanchton is not the only one who entertained these opinions in 
these times. You will have remarked this declaration ; ' Our 
brethren are agreed.' In the confession of Augsburgh, they 
had already proclaimed tolerably loudly the authority of the 
Church, of the Catholic Church, and even the doctrine of the 
Church of Eome. I have given you the passages above. As 
for the Calvinists, without retracing here the multitude of pro- 
fessions of faith, and of synods, the object of which evidently 
was to instruct and to hold people's minds in subjection, by the 
voice of authority, I shall notice some sentences of the synod 
of Delpht, because they have more closely imitated the language 
of the Catholic Church, and almost adopted the same doctrine. 
The remonstrants had advanced that the synod with which 
they were threatened would not be infallible like the apostles. 
It was not easy for the Calvinists openly to deny this ; the synod 
of Delpht, however, answered them in these words : ' Jesus 
Christ who promised to his apostles the Spirit of truth, whose 
lights should conduct them in all truth, also promised to his 
Church to be with her to the end of ages and where two or three 
arc assembled together in his name there to be in the midst of 
them ;' from which they conclude, a little later, ' that when pas- 
Resp. ad. Bel. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 107 

tors from several countries should be assembled, to decide ac- 
cording to the word of God, what must be taught in the Churches, 
we must, with a firm confidence, be persuaded that Jesus Christ 
would be with them according to his promise.' Now the declara- 
tion of this provincial synod (and this should be observed) was 
afterwards read and approved at the national synod of Dordrecht, 
called by all the party the almost oecumenical synod, because, 
in fact, in it were found deputies from England, Scotland, the 
Palatinate, Hesse, Switzerland, Geneva, Bremen, Emden, in a 
word, from the whole body of the reformation, not joined to the 
Lutherans, with the exception of the French, whom reasons of 
state kept away, but who approved of it afterwards. We see 
here the whole of Calvanism brought back in its turn to the 
principle of authority, as was Lutheranism before it, in the con- 
fession of Augsburgh. 

The particular teachers who have since appeared, and who 
have shewn more learning and moderation, in both parties, have 
adopted the same principles and held nearly the same language. 
I do not even entirely except M. Jurieu, whom I could cite to 
you, were it not of more consequence to make you acquainted 
with a more grave and more solidly instructed personage M. 
Molanus, the Abbe de Lokkum, the friend and fellow-laborer of 
Leibnitz, in the project of conciliation carried on for some time, 
between them and Bossuet, but which unfortunately failed. M. 
Molanus assigns as the third rule of faith the interpretation of 
the scripture adopted by common consent or authorized by the 
practice of the ancient and modern Church, — or which should 
be approved by a general council held legitimately and freely. 
All Christians are agreed Csays he) upon the following points: 
1st, such or such councils arc nut always necessary of themselves, 
but only on account of certain circumstances, as when the troubles 
of tin- Church cannot otherwise be appeased.' 2dly. 'It is 
agreed that the interpretation of scripture given by the council 
should be preferred, at least exteriorly, to that of any individ- 
ual : on this account the confess!) f Augsburgh declares that 

a general council is the ultimate means employed by antiquity 



108 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to procure the peace of the Church, and ought to be resorted to. 
The synod of Dordrecht, all the councils held by the two parties, 
and even that of the apostles, confirm the same thing. In fine, 
we find still another decided confirmation in the acts of the synod 
of Charenton, where it is said, that if it were permitted to all 
and to each one to adhere to private interpretations, there would 
be as many religions as parishes, ordly. Again, it is agreed, 
that the oecumenical councils have very often erred, 1 and that 
when we attribute to them the assistance of the Holy Spirit, or 
that infallibility to which all Christians owe an inward submission, 
we have never pretended that such infallibility belongs to them, 
precisely because they are councils, but because of the subsecpicnt 
consent of the greatest part of the Church, to which the assist- 
ance of the Holy Spirit is promised.' And in the new explana- 
tion of his method he says : ' If the Church had decided in a 
council undoubtedly general, such as are, by the consent of all 
parties, the first of Nice, the three of Constantinople, that of 
Chalcedon and that of Ephesus, the contrary to that which the 
protestants decide, there is no doubt that this decision should 
carry the day.' 2 You have here then, according to the learned 
Abbe and according to M. Leibnitz, for they both labored to- 
gether, the authority of the Church brought into honor and re- 
pute : and according to them and the acts of Charenton, it is not 
lawful for any one to adopt his private interpretations, because 
otherwise there would be as many religions as parishes : the 
oecumenical council should supersede all others ; infallibility is 
attached to the greatest part of the Church, because the assist- 
ance of the Holy Spirit has been promised it. Do we require 
more ? Or did we ask more in the time of Luther and Calvin ? 
Who would not feel himself vehemently moved with compassion 
at the sight of the fatal schism, that has been effected by means 
of crying down an authority, to which the reformers were one 
day to have recourse again ? the blindness and folly of man ! 

1 1 know not who can allow that the general councils have erred : certainly 
M. Molanua cannot do it, for he teaches the opposite in this very passage. 'Ibid. 
322. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 109 

Oh ! the misery of your guilty reformers and their numerous 
descendants ! 

But I am detaining you too long in a strange country : I has- 
ten to conduct you again to your fellow-countrymen. From the 
time that England, which perhaps may claim the glory of supe- 
rior knowledge in its temporal interests, and of excelling in the 
art of governing, had taken the fatal resolution to legalize schism 
and to form itself into a religious constitution, it felt the neces- 
sity of investing its new Church with all the strength and power 
of the nation. One of the first concerns of the parliament was 
to carry a law for the establishing of uniformity of worship. 
The supreme governess acted upon the same plan. No sooner 
had she substituted her bishops for those of the ancient Church, 
but she gave them to understand that they must assemble and 
draw up a formula of faith, that might serve as a basis of the com- 
mon creed of her subjects. They actually assembled in 1562, and 
drew up the thirty-nine articles, which afterwards received the 
approbation of parliament. But what influence could the gov- 
erness of the parliament have over the mind, after they had 
taught the people to despise the holy authority that Jesus Christ 
had given to his Church ? And, above all, what did the new 
spiritual lords mean by their twentieth article? With what face 
did they there claim for themselves the right of judging contro- 
versies, deciding upon matters of faith, of enforcing obedience 
to their decisions by all their spiritual censures, they, who but 
late had prided themselves on their abjuring the authority of the 
universal Church, and had just made so shameful a display of 
insubordination against their legitimate superiors? How come 
they, now a-days, to entertain so high an idea of the episcopal 
dignity and authority, much misplaced undoubtedly in their per- 
sons, and yet essentially most Christian ? There are then cer- 
tain powerful truths with which men find themselves pene- 
trated and as it were impregnated in spite of themselves; to 
which they are constrained to pay homage, when their interests 
hold their peace. For then they lay down their principles in 
theory, as if they no longer remembered having combated them 



110 ON THE CIIURCH OF ENGLAND 

the day before in their actions. To conclude, all that they gain 
is to give a more scandalous display to the contradiction with 
which they were reproached between their actual doctrine and 
their public conduct. Who are you? Said they to them : whence 
come you ? Yesterday we knew nothing of you ? Whose place 
do you occupy? It is the place of your masters in the faith, of 
your superiors, to whom the right of holding their sees still be- 
longs, unless sheer violence makes them lose it. You have de- 
spised authority in them, and would you have it recognised in 
you? They at least held it from the universal Church, with 
which they were in communion : they formed a part of the apos- 
tolic chain of succession ; but have not you by breaking his com- 
munion, broken also the chain? Have you not gone out of the 
regular line ? Intruders into these ancient sees, your authority 
comes from yourselves. 1 You have no existence, no power, 
except from your royal governess ; you are her creatures as she 
is the creature of parliament ; your authority comes from her ; 
her's from it. Join together, as long as you please, in framing 
rules of policy, among you and yours. So far, so good. But do 
not pretend to subjugate our opinions : they are free, you know 

" ' lit fieri solet in aedificio collapso, ut qui illud restaurare cupit, in veteri 
fundamento non fedificet, quia convulsum est et minus tirmum, et plenum ruderum, 
sed novum aliquod fundamentum ponit : ita in restauratione ecclesiae factum est. 
Voluit enim Deus non in veteri fundamento, hoc est, in aucceaaione epiacoporum, 
sed novo quodam et extraordinario niodo illam instaurationem fieri." 

"Nostri episcopi et ministri non sunt a papisticis episcopis ordinati."* 

It is a principle that he who withdraws himself from the authority of the 
Church, loses by that act all the jurisdiction he had received from it : and there 
no longer remains any jurisdiction for him to communicate. Thus the bishops 
who were not papistical, of whom Whitaker speaks, supposing even they had 
enjoyed the right of conferring it before their defection, would not have been 
able to transmit any after. Cardinal Pole was then the last archbishop of Can- 
terbury in the apostolic succession, and Parker the first in the parliamentary and 
royal establishment. 

And should the consecration of Parker have been valid (and this even, accord- 
ing to Le Courayer, is at least doubtful, to speak of it in the most favorable 
manner possible) it is certain that the jurisdiction of the Church could never 
have been communicated to him. 

* Dr. Whitaker, lector reg. Cantabr. Controv. II. q. V. c. vi. Died in 1595. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. Ill 

they are, you have taught us so, and without this, you would 
not be where you are.' The dispute has continued since and 
still exists between the partisans of the established Church, and 
the numerous sects, who wish for none. The first, agreeably 
with the institution of the divine Legislator, judge with reason 
that without authority there can be no unity in the Church : the 
others, agreeably with the principles of the reformation, and 
much more consistently, are of opinion, that if they must sub- 
mit to a spiritual authority, there was no necessity for beginning 
by emancipating themselves from it, and that, all things con- 
sidered, it would have been better to have kept to that, which 
derived its origin from God himself. It is certain that the doc- 
trine of the twentieth article is unwarrantable on the principle 
of the reformation, in England as well as upon the Continent. 1 
There was no other means of establishing it than by returning 
to the Catholic principle. It would have been necessary that 
the first reformers, instructed by experience, should frankly have 
acknowledged their mistake, have loudly declared that they had 
gone astray, and that neither order, nor unity, nor salvation 
could be expected, unless under the protection of an infallible 
authority. A candid and spiritual acknowledgment like this 
would have been too heroic to have been expected from the very 
p rsons who had raised the standard of revolt. But you who come 
so long behind them; you, who without partaking in their aggres- 
sion, equally share in their errors, and the fatal consequences, of 
which they were the first witnesses, and which they so much de- 
plored towards the end of their career, what prevents you from 
surrendering yourself to the clearness of the proofs, the force of 
truth, and the the lesson read by experience 2 Never lose sight of 
the day when the reformation took its rise in your country and 
elsewhere, and say ; The Church and its authority were then as 
before, as they are to day, and as they will be for ever, solidly 



1 See among others, Lord Somamri Tract*, vol. II. p. •!<;<>, where you will litnl 
an anonymtu work, the author of which expresses himself in a strong and viru- 
] ni. manner, against the twentieth article, and against bishop Sparrow, the pub- 
lisher of the thirty-nine articles and the canons. 



112 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

established upon the promises of Jesus Christ ; this foundation is 
not less firm and immoveable than that of the universe, for the 
finger of God supports them both alike, and promises to them 
the same duration. 

' Yes, Sir, will you say to me, I see with you and our re- 
formers the evils that have come from their principles : in spite 
of myself I must acknowledge that men have abused to their 
ruin the rights that had at first been given to them ; I am struck 
also with what you have said to me on the infallibility of the 
Church : your proofs embarrass me ; I know not what reply to 
make : nevertheless, Sir, excuse my boldness ; I am an English- 
man ; I love and adore liberty. Your principles of authority 
destroy it. They are adapted for nothing but to make slaves, 
and a slave I can never become.' 

I was expecting to see you fly to this strong entrenchment 
and your last refuge, Sir ; I am aware of the sentiments of your 
countrymen and their ideas of liberty ; ideas which they carry 
even into the sanctuary. I remember that during my residence 
in London, even one of your bishops (Dr. Hoarsley, if my mem- 
ory serves me faithfully) published a work in which he pushed 
to excess this objection against the Catholic principles. I read 
the work at the time, and was scandalized, not to say indignant. 
How, said I to myself, how can a man endowed with reason and 
great talents persuade himself that he is made a slave of, be- 
cause it is proposed to him to submit his private and individual 
opinion to the uniform opinion of all the bishops of the earth ? 
Liberty then, according to him, would be for each individual to 
prefer his own self to the highest authority of the world. But 
is it not the height of pride and the last degree of extravagance ? 
' Not to submit to such an authority, would be the height of 

pride and the blindest arrogance What more manifest 

proof can there be of our ingratitude to Grod, than to place our 
glory and exert our efforts in opposing an authority, which he 
created to be an aid and assistance to us V ' 

1 St. Augustine to his friend Honoratus on the Utility of believing tlic Church. 
xvii. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 113 

But, Sir, because upon the single fact of revealed dogmas 
you are required to follow the decisions of antiquity, of all the 
councils universally adopted, will you on that account consider 
yourself as degraded from your liberty and treated like a slave ? 
Were they slaves in Italy, in Germany, in France, Spain and 
England, where so many celebrated universities flourished, 
where so many great men have appeared in every state of life 
and every branch of science. To produce only one, but he the 
first of all, Bossuet, was he in your opinion a slave, he whose 
vast genius embraced so many sciences and treated them like a 
master, he whose iniuiitible and supreme excellence subdued all 
the enemies against whom he fought, made so many conquests 
to truth, and erected so many immortal trophies to religion ? 
But, you will say, as far as relates to dogmas at least, Bossuet 
was a slave, since he teaches so boldly that when the Church 
has spoken, we have only to believe and be silent. 

One moment, Sir, I pray. I may perhaps have something to 
say to you, which will produce a salutary confusion at your no- 
tion, and banish it for ever from your mind. Tell me, if you 
please, should Jesus Christ re-appear upon earth, or rather if 
you had had the happiness of seeing him and hearing his in- 
structions, would you have refused him obedience? Would you 
have considered yourself a slave because he commanded you to 
believe in his word ? You say nothing. Well then ! the au- 
thority to which you are at the present day to subject yourself, 
is still the authority of Christ. It is not the voice of man, that 
you obey by hearing the Church ; but that of Jesus Christ. He 
has spoken by his apostles ; as all Christianity agrees. He has 
spoken by his successors, and even as far as the fifth age, pro- 
t st.-mts are all agreed upon this. He continues to speak and 
will speak to the end of the word, by their means ; this is de- 
monstrated ; he himself has said it, promised it, and often re- 
peated his assurance of it : for this you have heard all the proofs. 1 

1 " I will say more : I declare to you that, if I were born a Catholic I would 
retaain a good Catholic, knowing well that your Church puts a very salutary re- 
straint upon the wanderings of human reason, which finds ncith.T bottom nor 
10* 



114 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Throw them aside your low ideas of servitude, and feel your- 
self much more ennobled under the yoke that your divine Re- 
deemer has with his own hand placed upon you, and upon the 
whole human race without exception. 

shore, when it attempts to sound the abyss of things : and I am so convinced of 
the utility of this restraint, that I have imposed upon myself a similar one, by 
prescribing to myself for the remainder of my life, some rules of faith, from 
which I do not allow myself to depart." (J. J. Rousseau, in his answer to M. 
Seguir de Saint -Brisson, dated Moitiers, July 22, 1764.) A very remarkable 
acknowledgement, forced by experience and reflection from a man, of all others, 
the most proud of his reason and liberty of thinking. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 115 

LETTER IV. 

On tlie Authority of Tradition. 

At the same time that reformers were pretending an absolute 
deference and an exclusive submission to the Holy Scripture, 
they united all their hatred and all their attacks against the in- 
fallibility, of the Church. This disposition ought not to surprise 
y<»u, Sir; the reason of it you will easily discover. It is not 
without reason that they fear an impartial and inflexible judge, 
whose eye is always open and cannot be escaped, and whose sen- 
tence is unchangeable ; there is no imposing upon a supreme 
tribunal, the office of which is to maintain the law in its integ- 
rity, to call to it those who are gone astray, to explain it to those 
who misunderstand it, to rectify all their errors, by giving to the 
text its just and true signification ; a tribunal armed moreover 
with a sacred authority to condemn, and proscribe the refractory 
and contumacious. The only means of escaping from its con- 
demnation and anathamas, was to dispute its title of divine au- 
thority, and to annihilate, had it been possible, its jurisdiction. 
The authors of the reformation saw full well, that they had no 
Other plan to adopt: they adopted it, and employed all their ef- 
forts to bring it to bear : they flattered themselves they should 
succeed by substituting for the judgment of the Bishops, the 
authority of the word of God, so religiously revered by all the 
faithful, so imposing to Christian ears : and as they reserved to 
themselves the right of interpreting it, there remained nothing 
more to be feared in their appeal from the Church to the scrip- 
tine, that is to say, to an insensible and passive letter, which 
signifies whatever we please, and bears ever, the most opposite 
interpretation without objection or reply, because it is dumb: 
which suffers violence and is put to the torture, and utters no 
complaint, because it is dead. 1 They established, then, for their 

'"Speech is to writing what a man is to his portrait. The productions of 

writing present theuiselvos to our eyea as if living ; but if we interrogate them, 



116 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

first maxim, that the judge of faith was not the Church, but the 
J ioly Scripture. lam going to examine this principle with you: 
and if the arguments I have to oppose to it are not much weak- 
ened by my pen, you will, I think, have to conclude that it was 
absolutely untenable in itself and in its consequences. 

For the second maxim, they taught that every thing essential 
in religion was in the scripture, and certainly, if the scripture 
was the sole rule of faith, the whole system of faith must be 
found there entire. The inference is logical but no less false in 
itself than the principle from which it is derived. And this we 
shall shortly prove. 

But previously it may be observed and collected from each of 
these principles, how little the first ages were then understood. 
The reformers were always boasting of the purity of those times, 
and with good reason : they were desirous, as they said, to re- 
produce this golden age of Christianity, and the renovated world 
was again to behold the restoration of the primitive Church 
which they always contrasted with the Church of Rome. They 
acted upon these three following suppositions : 1st, That anti- 
quity had possessed no other rule of life but the holy scripture : 
2ndly, that it had never believed or practised any dogmas or 
precepts but what were found therein : 3rdly, that those which 
are not discovered therein had been added to the simplicity of 
faith and worship, in what they called the times of ignorance and 
corruption : whence they concluded that by retrenching these 
superfluous additions, which they also pronounced to be super- 

thcy hold a dignified silence. It is the same with scripture, which knows neither 
what it should conceal from one man, nor what it should say to another. If it is 
attacked or insulted without cause, it cannot defend itself; for its father is never 
there to defend it ; so that he who imagines that he can establish by scripture 
alone, a clear and durable doctrine, is a great simpleton." (Plat, in Phcedr. Op. 
t. X. edit. Bipont. p. 382.) Glory to the truth ! (exclaims upon this the eloquent 
Comte de Maistre) "if the Word eternally living does not vivify the scripture, 
never will the scripture become the Word, that is to say, Life. Let others then, 
as long as they please, call upon the dumb word, we shall laugh in security at 
this false good, always waiting with a tender impatience for the moment in which 
its deluded votaries shall cast themselves into our arms, open to receive them now 
for nearly three hundred years." 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 117 

stitious and idolatrous, and by following what they supposed to 
be the rule of antiquity, 1 they should infallibly tally with it, and 
thus bring back the Church to its primitive purity. Such was 
the visionary proposal made by them on their appearance in the 
world : in their sincerity and simplicity, if you please, but more 
probably, in their ignorance of the first ages. For you have al- 
ready seen, with regard to the first point, Sir, that antiquity has 
laid the rule of faith in the doctrine of the bishops, according to 
the ordinance of Jesus Christ and the instructions of the apos- 
tles : on the third, you shall see clearly in the course of this ex- 
amination that the articles, treated as posterior additions, belong 
to the primitive times : on the second, I am about to shew you 
that, far from thinking that the dogmas and precepts were ex- 
clusively contained in scripture, antiquity teaches us after the 
scripture itself, that many articles are derived to us from the 
apostles by a purely oral tradition. 

The clergy of Elizabeth, in unison with the innovators of the 
continent, and like them in opposition to the sacred books and 
antiquity, declared accordingly, that 'the holy scripture contain- 

1 In 1528, at the dispute at Berne, at which were present Zuinglius, Pellican, 
Bucer, BuHinger, CEcolampadius, and Capto, the second of the six theses asserted : 
" The Church of Christ does not make ordinances and laws without the word of 
( tod.''* And here they were only treating of those laws which regard salvation 
and bind conscience, according to the explanation given to the theses by Kolb, in 
the name of the reformed. — Bucer, replying to a Catholic, asserts 'that it had 
been already proved, that the true Church makes no regulation which is not 
1 1 sarly established in scripture. 't 

In 1636, in the disputation at Lausanne, Virol said, 'that it was not sufficient 
to say : I have found it written (in the Fathers), but wc must keep to the scrip- 
ture: nii'1 ill it it w that make* the Church of the Lord'% 'The holy fathers, de- 
clared Jewel in the name of the Chttrcb of England have never combated heretics 
except by the arms of the scripture."}: 'And thus, he tells as (a little later), 
when we desired to restore the Church to its primitive purity and intergrity, we 
did not attempt to build upon any other foundation than the one laid by the 
apostles and Jesus Christ : after having attended to what he himself has said to 
us, alter having considered the example of the primitive Church, we proceeded, 
Ac* || 

• HUtoire it la rtforme de la Suisse, par Ruchat, professour do belles lettres a Lau- 
sanne, torn, ii. p. U5. edit. do. Geneve, 1727. t Ibid. torn. vi. p. 31, 35. t -Apolog, i. uo. 
15. [bid-vi. no. 1G, 17. 



118 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

eth all things necessary to salvation ; so that whatsoever is not 
read therein, or can not be proved thereby, is not to be required 
of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or 
be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. 1 ' But without 
going any further, shew us, my Lords, the validity of your bap- 
tism, by scripture alone. Jesus Christ there ordains that it 
shall be conferred, not by pouring water on the heads of the be- 
lievers, but by the believers plunging into water. The word 
€««-ti^£oj employed by the Evangelists, strictly conveys this sig- 
nification as the learned are agreed, and at the head of them, 
Casaubon, of all the Calvinists, the best versed in the Greek 
language. Now baptism by immersion has ceased for many 
ages, and you yourselves, as well as we have, only received it 
by infusion : it would therefore be all up with your baptism, 
unless you established the validity of it by tradition and the 
practice of the Church. And again, we see from scripture that 
Jesus Christ commanded his apostles and their successors to 
preach and baptize ; but we do not read any where that he com- 
municated this right to heretics, whom he treated as pagans. 
This being settled. I ask you, from whom have you received 
baptism? Is it not from the Church of Home? And what do 
you think of her ? Do you not consider her as heretical and 
even idolatrous? You cannot then, according to the terms of 
scripture, prove the validity of your baptism ; and to produce a 
proof for it, you are obliged to seek it, with Pope Stephen and 
the councils of Aries and Nice, in apostolical tradition. 

You recognize with us the precept of sanctifying the Sunday, 
and considering the care with which you inculcate it to your 
people and the wise regulations of governmeut that concur with 
your instructions to confirm it in their minds, 2 I cannot doubt 
that you regard this precept as necessary to salvation. Never- 

1 Article 6. 

• For the honor of the English government and for the shame of Catholic coun- 
tries, I am bound to publish, that the Sunday is observed in England with an 
exterior regularity, which we unfortunately, are far from equalling. On this 
day, especially consecrated to God, the laws and customs allow no public assem- 
blies, out of the churches and temples ; no balls, no routs, no masquerades, no 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 119 

theless, it must be allowed, scripture is absolutely silent upon 
this precept : we every where read Sabbath (Saturday): and no 
where Sunday. And here again, the third time, are you obliged, 
in an essential matter to support yourselves with us upon tradi- 
tion, which shews us, from time immemorial, the Sunday as sub- 
stituted for the Sabbath or Saturday, in order to celebrate on one 
and the same day the two great prodigies of the ancient and 
modern eras, the universe coming forth from nothing, and Jesus 
Christ from his tomb. 

In order to discard tradition, you tell us, my Lords, that the 
scripture contains everything that is necessary to salvation. A 
strange and fantastical doctrine! and such I cannot but call it, 
seeing that you are most positively indebted to tradition for the 
scriptures, that you receive them from its hands, and that with- 
out it, you would not know to what to betake yourselves to de- 
monstrate their authenticity : for we do not prove that a book is 
written by such an apostle or such an Evangelist, except that it 
has been received and read as such in the Churches. But sup- 
posing that to please you for a moment, we must admit your 
sixth article. I cheerfully consent to do so, and at the same time 
we will open these inspired writings. What do we read there? 
'Now T praise you brethren that you keep my ordinances 

Uenela^h, no Yauxhall ; all theatrical amusements are forbidden. In London, 
where commerce is so prodigiously carried on, the public conveyances remain at 
rest, the course of letters is suspended, the post does not receive them, although 
it is permitted to them in the evening to make their way to their destination : 
throughout the whole kingdom, stage wagons employed in trade or commerce 
stop on the high roads. I know not whether an act passed upon a Sunday would 
not be annulled by its very date alone. Certain, however, it is, that the civil 
power is obliged to suspend its pursuits, and concede to the debtor the light of 
appearing freely on tin- day of tin- Lord. On this day, moreover, the parliament 
is '-| ( ,.- d, in spite of tin' urgency of afikirs, and 1 have often .-ecu it respectfully 
interrupt it-- sessions at the approach of crreat solemnities. It must be confess d 
that there U in these laws a tone of wisdom and gravity that makes an impression 
on tlw mind. 

English persons of distinction have often testified t« me their astonishment at 
not finding in Catholic countries the same respect for the Sunday. They have 
dielatv.l to Die Hi it the) had been BOHCh scandalized on the subject, and certainly 
they had I. nt too iiiik h reason to be so. 



120 ON THE C1IURCH OF ENGLAND 

as I have delivered them to you. 1 Stand fast (mark this well I 
pray you) and hold the traditions which you have learned, 
whether by word or by our epistle.' 2 Now let us look again at 
your article. What would the apostles say to it? He desires 
that they hold equally fast what he had taught them, whether 
by writing or by word of mouth. And what is it you desire, 
my lords? Nothing but what is written. That is sufficient. I 
go on reading : '0 Timothy keep that which is committed to thy 
trust. 3 Hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of 
me in faith, and in the love which is in Christ Jesus. Keep the 
good tiling committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, who 
dwelleth in us. 4 And the things which thou hast heard of me 
by many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men, who shall 
be fit to teach others.' 5 Apparently you doubt not, my lords, 
that Timothy followed this direction, and that faithful and fit 
men being instructed by him, instructed others in their turn. 
Thus from hand to hand, from age to age, the deposit is come 
down to you. And all at once you refuse to accept it ; you re- 
fuse to transmit it, you interrupt, you break the traditional and 
apostolic chain ; and, under pretext of holding to scripture alone, 
you disregard its repeated and most evident injunctions. Hon- 
estly confess, my lords, you did not think, by throwing aside 
tradition, that you would become embarrassed in contradictions 
both with yourselves and with the Holy Scripture. We as well 
as you, receive it, we venerate it, as the most noble present that 
God has made to man ; do you also honor in the same manner 
with us his unwritten word, since it comes not the less from 
Him. Change your article: let us stand fast together, accord- 
ing to the precept of the apostle, and retain all that has been 
taught, whether by word of mouth, or by writing. 

I return to you, Sir, and I entreat you to weigh the observa- 
tions I have yet to make to you on this important matter. They 
are suggested to us by the example of the apostles and their suc- 
cessors, during the illustrious ages of the Church. 1st. We 

I Tim. vi. 20. * II Tim. i, 13, 14. 3 Ibid. xi. 2. * 1 Cor. xi. 5 II Thcs. 
xi. 14. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 121 

often see that Jesus Christ commands his apostles to preach his 
gospel and carry it to all nations. 'Go (said he to them) teach 
all nations whatever I have commanded you.' We no where find 
that he said to them : Go ; icrite for all nations what I command 
you to believe and practice, and let them always have in their 
bands under their eyes the most exact detail of their faith drawn 
out by your pen We behold the apostles and the disciples, 
after having received the Holy Spirit, traversing the whole of 
Judea, announcing to their countrymen the kingdom of God : 
every thing is done by exhortations, by instructions and prayers. 
If they had intended to give to the world, and to leave after 
them a complete code of revealed laws, it would seem natural 
that they should have drawn out this code, before their separa- 
tion. Let us observe them therefore at the moment, when, 
dividing the world among them to accelerate its conquest, they 
are on the point of leaving Jerusalem and Judea, and of pro- 
ceeding, each his way, to their particular destination. They 
separate, and carry with them no writing, no body of doctrine 
drawn up by common agreement. They all, however, carry the 
same gospel, but in their minds and hearts; they traverse cities, 
provinces, kingdoms, and do not present themselves to the na- 
tions with the sacred books in their hands : they preach from 
their inspired mouths the evangelical doctrine, but never pro- 
duce it in writing. To see them and follow them, they seem not 
even to think of any means of instructing men by the eyes. 
They are totally occupied with preaching and not with writing : 
with engraving the word, not upon the lips, but on the souls of men. 
Many years had already passed, and no work had as yet ap- 
peared from their pen. 1 You will remark that out of twelve 
apostles, two only have left us a gospel, and even St. John at a 
very advanced age, at Ephesus, under the Emperor Nerva, in the 
year 96. If you examine the occasions which induced them to 
write, you will find that particular and local circumstances gave 

1 We mu.-i exeept Hi'' gospel of St. Matthew : for we learn from St. Chrysos- 
tom* that eight yean after the ascension of our Saviour, at the time when he 

•On St. Matthew. 



122 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

birth to these writings, as well as to all those that compose the New 
Testament. We owe the gospel of St. Mark to the fervor and 
eagerness of the Christians at Rome. Eusebius tells us upon the 
testimony of Clement of Alexandria, 1 that ' the hearers of St- 
Peter besought Mark, his disciple, to put in writing the doc- 
trine of the Saviour. He did so ; and Peter, inspired from above, 
examined this work, approved it, confirmed it with his authority, 
and ordered that it should be read in the Churches.' St. Luke 
commences by informing us of the motive that induced him to 
write. Ignorant and rude men, hurried on by a blind and cul- 
pable zeal had attempted of their own heads to relate the words 
and actions of our Saviour : their writings were spreading among 
the Christians under the false titles of the gospels according to 
Peter, Thomas, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthias, the twelve 
apostles, &c. It was of consecpience that these miserable rhap- 
sodies, should be put down. St. Paul exhorted his disciples to 
publish an exact narrative, and Luke executed it under the eye 
of his master, in Achaia and Boeotia, according to St. Jerome, 
in the year 58, the second of Nero. As for St. John, it was to 
refute the heresies of Cerinthus and the Ebionites that taking his 
lofty flight beyond the bounds of time, he shews us Jesus Christ 
in the bosom of the divinity, the Son of God. God himself, and 
then re-descends with him upon earth, to relate to us his incar- 
nation, his life and ministry among men. 

The epistles, for the most part, are either answers to consulta- 
tions, or instructions to Churches especially mentioned, or even 
to individuals. Called forth by local circumstances, but always 
dictated by the Holy Spirit, they appear successively at different 
epochs, at distant periods of time : adapted to the circumstances 
of the place, of the persons and sometimes of the moment, they 
treat of particular and relative subjects, although at the same 
time they contain advice, lessons and precepts that are applicable 
to Christians in general. But this does not authorize us to an- 

was going to preach to the Gentiles, St. Matthew, at the solicitation of the Jews, 
sketched out, in their language, a History of Jesus Christ and his revelation. 
' Hist. Eccles. Lib. II. xiv. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 123 

nounce, or suppose in the sacred writer, much less in the college 
of the apostles, a settled resolution, a premeditated design of 
drawing out for us a complete body of doctrine. It is true that 
all these writings were received with a singular avidity by the 
faithful to whom they were addressed ; true also that they were 
communicated one after another with a holy eagerness, and that, 
from the day on which they were first known to the moment I 
am addressing you, they have been read in all religious assemblies, 
in all the Churches of the world, and that this will be done per- 
petually to the end of time. It is true, that in them the doctrine 
of the apostles was recognised, their word tasted, their preaching 
discovered, and that though absent they seemed still to be heard. 
It is true, that the first Christians must have admired the agree- 
ment and resemblance of what they read with what they had 
heard. Yet nevertheless they could not but remark that all 
that they had heard was not there ; they could not therefore, in 
receiving these works as the sacred deposit of the divine word, 
regard them as the sole and only deposit of this word. In fact, 
did the apostle ever signify that, for belief and practice we must 
confine ourselves to what they were waiting? Did they ever 
signify, that they had entrusted to writing all that they had 
preached by word of mouth, or even all that was necessary for 
salvation ? There is not an expression of the kind in the whole 
of the New Testament. It comes from your reformers, who have 
drawn it from their brain or borrowed it from the ancient heresies, 
but not from the Holy Scripture, whatever protestation they all 
may perpetually be making, that they teach nothing but what is 
there. Let them shew you then this principle, since they admit 
it and wish you to admit it: let them shew it to you in the sacred 
volume. But how could they do it, when the contrary principle 
is found therein contained in so many words. For you have seen 
St. Paul frequently referring to the instructions he had given by 
word of mouth ; you have heard him positively distinguishing 
between his verbal and epistolary instructions ami prescribing 
that both the one and the other must be equally observed. Up 
to the time of your forefathers in 1502, this order had been ob- 



124 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

served in England as well as upon the Continent, until the day 
when the Reformation shewed its head. At this epoch, so fatal 
to your country and my own, the precept of St. Paul was sol- 
emnly transgressed for the first time, and for the first time it was 
said: In what pertains to salvation, there is nothing but what is 
written. But the first Christians who passed many years without 
the scriptures, who received them successively one after another, 
and waited for the Gospel of St. John till the year 96 : but 
those barbarous and yet most religious people who had not even 
then any Scripture when St. Irenaaus wrote of them towards the 
end of the second age, they would not have known either what 
they ought to believe, or what they ought to practice; they 
would have been without resource for salvation — they who la- 
bored for it to an extent and with an energy of faith to which 
we shall never attain ! The reformation must here maintain at 
least that the means which they then possessed of knowing the 
law, and which sufficed for them, became absolutely useless as 
soon as heaven chose to add a second, and that the word reduced 
to legible characters stripped the word that was not so, of the 
merit and value it had hitherto enjoyed in the Christian world. 
I have been proving to you, Sir, that this notion is no ways in 
accordance with the conduct and doctrine of the apostles ; you 
shall now see that it accords no better with the conduct and doc- 
trine of their successors, and that antiquity was never acquainted 
with any such opinion. 

2ndly, I will suppose that the reformed Church has to pro- 
nounce upon a question of faith. How is it to set about appro- 
ving or condemning the doctrine submitted to its decisions ? It 
knows nothing but the Scripture ; all that relates to salvation is 
to be found there ; nothing can be required that is not read there 
in full, or that cannot be drawn from it by a sound and lawful 
inference. It would not and could not therefore have any thing 
but the Scriptures to consult. But this was not the way of 
proceeding that antiquity followed. It examined not only the 
Scriptures, but also what was believed and taught by the Church- 
es, above all by the apostolic Churches, and what the most 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 125 

celebrated Fathers had signified in their works ; its examination 
was directed both to the holy Scripture and the doctrine of 
Tradition, to the written and unwritten word of G-od. We will, 
if you please, produce an example, the most illustrious to be 
found, and which will dispense with our accumulating here a 
multitude of facts. The great council of Nice had to pronounce 
upon Arius, who was pretending to justify his doctrine by Scrip- 
ture. "We learn from the historians of the time, in what manner 

it proceeded in its examination : 'The bishops opposed 

to the false subtilities of the Arians the great truths of Scripture, 
and the ancient belief of the Church, from the apostles till then. 1 
' After having a long time, maturely and fully considered this 
adorable subject, it appeared to all our bishops together, that the 
consubstantiality was to be defined as of faith, in the same man- 
ner as this faith had been transmitted by our fathers, after the 
apostles. 2 You see here a fundamental question solemnly decided 
according to both authorities, according to Scripture upon which 
Arius placed his reliance, and according to the tradition of the 
holy Fathers, conformably with which the decision was carried. 
The single fact of itself crumbles to ruins the principle of the 
Reformation, and shows how far it has wandered from the ancient 
way. 

But I will now adduce something else, quite of a different 
character but equally powerful for my purpose ; another question 
of importance, celebrated for its antagonists, who were, on the 
one side the head of the Church, on the other, the primate of 
Africa ; and which after having agitated and divided the Church 
for nearly a century, was definitively decided without any possible 
recurrence to Scripture, by tradition alone, in this same general 
council. I am alluding to the question of re-baptization. In 
vain would they search the Scripture for the manner in which 
heretics were to be received into the Church : whether they must 
be admitted with the baptism they had received out of the Church, 
or whether it must be again administered. You are aware, Sir, 
how intimately this question is connected with salvation, and 

1 Maiiuburg after EusebiuB. '-' GelasiuB. 
11* 



126 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

how fatal would be tke mistake, if their baptism were null and 
it were not conferred again in the Church. As the Scripture 
did not speak to the point, every thing was decided by the prac- 
tice of the Churches. But at the time when the question arose, 
this practice was not as yet generally known ; the conversion, 
the return of heretics, not being at that time an every day oc- 
currence, nor even frequent in any country. St. Cyprian 
observing that in Africa they were received without a renewal 
of their baptism, and being ignorant also of the practice in remote 
countries, was induced by many plausible reasons to believe, that 
this custom was injurious to the true principles of the Church 
and its faith. He assembled his brethren at Carthage, and in 
concert with them he decided, that from that time forward they 
should change their method, and that baptism should be conferred 
anew upon all those who should relinquish their heresy. This 
decision made a noise : Stephen, the successor of Peter, pro- 
claimed the voice of tradition from his chief and supreme chair. 
St. Cyprian, supposing that this tradition was neither general 
nor ancient, did not submit. The dispute continued, and was 
only settled by the decision of the council of Nice, which admit- 
ted without a renewal of baptism all heretics, except the disciples 
of Paul of Samosata, who altered the form of it. ' We ourselves,' 
says St. Augustine, speaking of the quarrel between Cyprian and 
the Pope, ' we should not dare to affirm with St. Stephen the 
validity of such a baptism, had it not been confirmed by the 
most perfect agreement of the Catholic Church, to whose authori- 
ty St. Cyprian would have submitted, if in his time a general 
council had cleared up and decided the question.' The reformed 
religion must surrender itself to the evidence of this fact, and 
must acknowledge, with the great council of Nice, that scripture 
alone does not contain every essential, and that tradition can 
supply its silence ; since here in default of the sacred books, 
every thing is decided by the ancient and general belief, justly 
considered as the doctrine of the apostles. 

The reformed religion would never have thought of erecting 



AND TUE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 127 

as a principle that the scripture alone decides every essential 
point, if it had recollected this decisive and unanswerable exam- 
ple, and if it had not lost sight of the ancient maxim, to which 
St. Agustine so often recurs : that we must consider as an insti- 
tution of the apostles whatever we find to be generally believed 
and observed in the Churches without being able to discover its 
origin and commencement. 

And if it had had before its eyes this doctrine of the first ages, 
set down by Vincent of Lerins, in these terms : ' we must be 
particularly careful to hold fast that doctrine, which has been 
believed in all places, at all times and by all. For as the word 
(catholic) itself plainly denotes, there is nothing truly and pro- 
perly catholic, but that which comprehends all in general. Now 
it will be so, if we follow universality, antiquity, and unanimous 
consent. We shall follow universality, if we believe that doctrine 
alone to be true, which the Church every where admits. We 
shall follow antiquity, if we depart not from the opinions which 
our ancestors and fathers openly maintained. We shall follow 
unanimous consent, if we adhere to the sentiments of all, or of 
almost all, our pastors and teachers.' 1 And if it would have 
taken advice from St. John Chrysostom, who commenting on 
the famous passage of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, expresses 
himself as follows ; ' Hence it is plain, that all things were not 
delivered in writing, but many otherwise ; and are equally 
worthy to be believed. Wherefore let us hold fast to the tradi- 
tions of the Church. It is tradition : let this suffice.' 2 And of 
St. Basil on the same passage : ' Among the points of belief and 
practice in the Church, some were delivered in writing, while 
others were received by apostolic tradition in mystery, that is in 
a bidden manner: but both have equal authority as far as piety 
is concerned ; nor are they opposed by any one who is but slight- 
ly versed in ecclesiastical rites. For if we attempt to reject, as 
matters of little moment, such points, as were not written, we 

' Commonit i. n. ii. |». :;17. Edit. Paris, 1684. "IIoiu. iv. in 2 Thes ii. T. 9. p. 
. Paris, L636. 



128 ON THE CIIU11CH OF ENGLAND 

shall, by our imprudence, offer a signal injury to the gospel." 
And again of St. Epiphanius, who proves the necessity of tra- 
dition. 'We must look to tradition, says he ; for all things can- 
not be learned from scriptures. For which reason the holy 
apostles left some things in writing, and other not.' 2 

And if it had observed, what particularly merits observation 
from its singularity, our very question proposed in express terms 
by a celebrated writer of the second century and decided as fol- 
lows ; ' But you say, (writes Tertullian) even in speaking of 
tradition, some written authority is necessary. Let us then 
enquire whether no tradition should be admitted, unless it be 
written.' (This is precisely the objections laid claim to by the 
reformed religion : attend to its refutation.) ' I will allow, that 
it should not, if no examples of other practices can be adduced, 
which we maintain on the sole title of tradition, and the strength 
of custom, without the smallest written authority. To begin 
with baptism ; when on the point of entering the water, we pro- 
test, in the Church and under the hands of the bishops, that we 
renounce the devil, and his pomps and his angels : after this, we 
are immersed three separate times, replying something more than 
our Saviour presented in the gospel. Leaving the water we take 
a mixture of milk and honey ; and from this time, for the space 
of a week, we refrain from the daily bath. The sacrament of 
the Eucharist, instituted by the Lord, at the time of the repast 
and for all, we take in our assemblies before day, and only from 
the hand of him who presides. We offer for the dead ; we an- 
nually celebrate the birth of the martyrs (The day 

of their death is the day of their birth to immortality) ' Of these 
and other usages if you ask for the written anthority of the 
scriptures, none will be found. They spring from tradition, 
which practice has confirmed and obedience ratified.' 3 

The day would not suffice to adopt the expression of St. 

i De Spir. Sancto. c. 27. T. iii. p. 54. Ed. Bened. Paris. 1721. 2Haer. 55. T. 
i. p. 471, Ed. Colonic. 1682. 3 De corona Militis, iii. iv. p. 2S2. Edit. Rothom- 
agi. 1662. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 129 

Basil, 1 were I to attempt to describe to you all that the fathers 
have said on the subject of tradition. I am not surprised that 
they so frequently insist upon it ; they were but two or three de- 
grees from the origin of the Church : they had a near view of the 
means and regulations that had tended to aggrandize and extend 
it : they held in mind that the apostles, entirely occupied in the 
ministry of the word, had rarely taken up the pen, and only 
from accident and necessity ; that their preaching had been daily 
and abundant ; their writing accidental and short ; that supposing 
the ground of the doctrine to be in their writings, the develop- 
ment of.it could not be found there also ; that for the detail they 
must always have recourse to their verbal explanations ; that, 
even on their mysteries and dogmas, they had in their works 
(tesignly thrown a certain veil of obscurity to prevent the pro- 
fane from having access to them, whilst in the midst of the 
faithful and their friends, they expressed themselves openly and 

1 The day would not be sufficient, were I to attempt to relate to you all tho 
mysteries transmitted to the Church without wilting.* To omit others, from 
what writing have we this profession of faith in God, the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost (the apostles creed)?' He had said before: ' Which of the saints have 
left us in writing the words of invocation in the consecration of the eucharistic 
bre vl and chalico? For we do not confine ourselves to those which the gospel 
and the apostle mention : we make additions before and after, as being of great 
importance to the mystery, and which are co?ne down to us by an unwritten tra- 
dition.'! And again, the following remarkable words occur in the same passage : 
' The apostles and the fathers, who have from the beginning, prescribed certain 
rites to the Church, knew how to preserve for mysteries their becoming dignity, 
by the secresy and -ilence in which it kept them enveloped. For what is thrown 
open to the ear and the gaze of the people, is no longer absolutely mysterious. 
For this reason have many things been transmitted to us without writing, lest 
th- vulgar becoming too much familiarized with our dogmas, should pass from 
familiarity to contempt, The dogma is one thing, and preaching another. Dog- 
mas require to be kept Bilent— preaching to be public. There is, moreover, an- 
other kind of silence, that of obscurity, in which the scripture purposely conceals 
'itself to render the dogmas more difficult to be comprehended.' And now, Sir, 
draw your conclusion, what this learned bishop of Cesarean would have thought 
of pour reformation, that pretends to take every thing from scripture and nothing 
from tradition. 

• De Bplr.Sancto. c. 27, T. Hi- p. &4. Ed. Bened. Paris, 1721. 

t De Spir. Sancto. c. 27. T. 111. t St. Basil, archbishop of Cesarea, iu Cappadocia, 
died in 379. 



139 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

without restraint; in fine, that they never committed to writing 
the words and prayers with which they accompanied the cele- 
bration of the mysteries. These sacred and often essential forms 
were deposited in the hearts and the memory, and transmitted 
from mouth to mouth more securely in secret. After the exam- 
ple of their masters, the apostolic fathers wrote little : they also 
had their time taken up in active employment, rather than in 
composing works ; and when they took up their pen it was 
scarcely ever for any other reason than to make known to 
strangers, what they had heard preached by the apostles. Day 
by day did they repeat it round about them to their audience, 
and occasionally communicated it at a distance by writing. In 
this manner, in the Churches where the apostles had preached, their 
doctrine was preserved by the succession of disciples to the apostles, 
of hearers of the disciples to these same disciples, and thus from 
one to another. As for those from without, it reached them by 
means of communications carried on from one Church to another ; 
a steady and active correspondence attested and propagated through 
the world the instructions derived from the apostles and Jesus 
Christ, by establishing, according to the vigorous expression of 
Tertullian ; cons««^u'?u7y of doctrine in all the Churches of the world. 
Did any doubt or new question ai-ise, recourse was immediately 
had to the apostolic Churches : they consulted by preference 
those Churches, in which ' presided still the chairs, whence the 
apostles had often delivered their public discourses, 1 (and which 
after them seem to have been left vacant from respect ;) in which 
ware recited their authentic epistles, that recalled as it were the 
stund of their voices and the features of their countenances.' 2 
Observe that Tertullian joins here the chairs of the apostles with 
their epistles ; to indicate that the written word and the word 
delivered by preaching always went together. ' Are you in the 
neighborhood of Achaia? You have Corinth: are you at no 
great distance from Macedonia ? You have the Church of the 
Phillippians, and of the Thessalonians : but if you can reach as 
far as Asia, you have Ephesus f approach Italy, and you have 
1 Tertull. on Prescript. *Ibid. 3 ' The Church of Ephesus, founded by Paul, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 131 

Rome," The dignity of which Tertullian forgets not to set off 
in the most noble and sensible manner according to the true 
principles of Christianity. ' See what Rome has learned, what 
it has taught, and the perfect harmony of its doctrine with that 
of the African Churches.' Thus you will understand, sir, they 
did not upon new questions involve themselves in disputes which 
end in nothing : they did not permit themselves to be carried 
away by their private fancy or their enthusiasm : they did not 
abandon themselves to learned and laborious disquisitions, they 
did not regulate themselves according to the ostentation and dis- 
play of a few teachers : all was decided by the doctrine and the 
tradition of the apostolical Churches. It was in this, according 
to the happy expression of Thomassin, that consisted their 
learned simplicity and their solid method of examining questions 
of faith. 

A particular circumstance contributed much to preserve in 
these illustrious ages : the purity of the apostolic traditions. 
God, in the views of his providence over his Church, permitted 
during dangers and persecutions, that some of these first and 
holy bishops should extend their career to a very advanced age : 
and as formerly, in the old world, the patriarchs, by means of 
their long years, more easily transmitted to posterity what they 
had learned from their fathers and grandfathers on the creation 
of the world, the dogmas of religion and the principal features 
of the antediluvian history, so in Christianity these venerable 
old men served to testify that the faith of their time was exactly 
the same as that which they had received from the apostles and 
the disciples of the apostles. Not to speak of St. John, who 
lived a century, and of his centenary disciple Polycarp, who 
suffered martyrdom in 166, we learn from Clement of Alexandria, 
' that some of those who had immediately succeeded the apostles, 
and preserved the tradition of the true doctrine preached by 

governed by John. (He there terminated his days after linving resided there a 
long time with the motln-r whom .Jfr.-ms ("hfist hfijucatliivl to him from the height 
of the cross), until the reign of Trajan, Is without contradiction one of the best 
witu -is of apostolic tradition.' Irenesns, xxiii. ' Turtull. Ibid. 



132 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Saints Peter, James, John and Paul, had lived till the time in 
which he was writing his Stromata, to sow and cultivate the seed 
of true faith in the minds of men.' 1 This remark, it must be 
allowed, would have been as useless as misplaced, on the princi- 
ple of the reformation : for what need was there of the long life 
of these holy personages to preserve the apostolic traditions ; and 
cultivate in the mind the seed of true faith, if there had been 
nothing for them to believe or practice but what they read in the 
scriptures, or what could easily be deduced therefrom ? 

However, sir, do not imagine that by here making war with 
the first promoters of the reformation, I mean to extend the same 
reproaches to all those who have since been born in its bosom. 
Among the distinguished characters of which it has reason to 
boast, there are a great number who have thought themselves 
bound to abandon it in its overstretched maxims on the sufficiency 
of the scriptures : this must be said to their praise, it is an act 
of justice due to them, which I take pleasure in discharging. 
Scarcely were the first controversies opened, when many already 
perceived that, in the spirit of party, they had carried things too 
far. They began by entering into a composition upon the prin- 
ciple, being desirous indeed to admit tradition upon certain 
points, and to reject it upon others, for the honor of the reforma- 
tion. 2 These primary concessions opened the way for others 

Clement of Alexandria, died in 217. He wrote his Stromata towards the end 
of the second century. Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem in 212, succeeded Nar- 
cis-m, who died at the age of 116 years, being born, of course, in 96, when the 
aged Simeon was bishop of Jerusalem. Simeon, suffered martyrdom in 108, aged 
120, born, therefore, 12 years before Jesus Christ. Narcissus, who died about 
the year 220, aged 124, and who was born, of course about the year 96, must 
have seen Simeon twelve years: Alexander, in 212 coadjutor of Narcissus, eight 
years : he suffered martyrdom in 255. 

-It is remarkable that the Confession of Augsburgh* and the apology declare, 
that they do not despise the agreement of the Catholic Church, and go so far as 
to appeal to the authority of the ancient Church. Zuingliusf grants that the 
apostles taught by word of mouth, and that the epistles they sent were rather to 
confirm the people in what they had learned, than to instruct them. 

Calvin and Beza were not slow in having recourse to tradition against the 
Arians, sprung from their school. Ochin had said:): 'The sacred words are of 

* Art. 21. t Tom. ii. fol. 43. J Dial. 2. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 133 

more open and less limited, and some wise and enlightened minds, 
after calmly contemplating the precepts of the apostles, the spirit 
of the primitive Church, and the confidence they could not re- 
fuse to the piety, and fervor of the first ages, to the depositions 
and testimony of all those holy bishops and illustrious martyrs 
of Jesus Christ, have felt the irresistible force of the proofs and 
have openly adopted the ideas and the language of antiquity upon 
tradition. Of these I could cite many ; but shall confine myself 
to three or four whom I shall not choose among the least known 
or distinguished. 

Gortius shall speak the first. 1 ' From the confession of Rivet, 
what is said by the apostles, either by the express command of 
God, or with full deliberation, has not less authority than what 
has been written by them. Nothing is more true. Now, that 
the apostles have not written all they have uttered, St. Paul him- 
self testifies, by ordering that we submit to all that he had taught 

themselves very clear, even in things necessary for salvation; and if the Trinity 

does not clearly appear in them, no one is obliged to believe in it 1 do not find 

that the Holy Spirit is there called God or Lord. I had rather enter a cloister 
than acknowledge that.* But Calvin, leading them to the unwritten word, taught 
them from the second epistle to Timothy : By this is repelled the arrogance of any 
senseless creatures, who boast that they stand in no need of teachers, because the 
rqading of the scriptures is sufficient. He that shall make no account of the aid 
of the living voice, and shall content himself with the dumb scripture, shall feel 
how great an evil it \a to despise the means ordained by God and Jesus Christ for 
being introduced.'! What then! holy fathers,' exclaimed Beza % against Stator, 
Ochin, and others, 'you, who for so many years, not in word alone but in wri- 
tings which shall never perish, have, contrary to the authority of so many kings, 
princes, and heretics, with so much labor, even to the shedding of your blood, 
defended the great mystery of the Trinity, shall it be said that you are imprudent 
and ignorant '.' <> Athanaaius! thou who didst on account of this subject traverse 
almost the whole world, for what reason didst thou compose and construct that 
admirable creed with bo much brevity, <fec.|| 

1 This is taken from his Votum pro pace, page I'm, a judicious and impartial 
little work com Rivet and those who, like him were opposed to a 

reconciliation with the Catholic Chnrch. Ii is much to be regretted that this 
work is not more known. It cannot be too much recommended to the perusal 
of all protestant societies. You will find it in English, a voia for pew e. 

* Dial. '1. t<'itoil in Florimoiul, p. 955. J Ibid. 959.... || Bcza's book on the pun- 

ithment of herttici 

12 



134 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

whether by word or by writing.' Here Grotius subjoins the pas- 
sage from St. Chrysostom which I have cited above, and con- 
cludes that in both cases the authority is the same. ' But, says 
the Doctor, we are sure of the writings ; we cannot be so of the 
words. This I positively deny. The writings are full of varia- 
tions, as is seen on comparing the manuscripts. In some there 
are particles which are not in others. There is a diversity of 
words, whether insulated or united. To separate and collect the 
original is neither a small labor, nor always successful. But 
how can we be certain that there are apostolic traditions ? says 
Doctor Rivet. In this way. In the first place, it may reason- 
ably be presumed that we must attribute to the apostles what is 
found to prevail every where, and what has no other known ori- 
gin. To this if you add the witnesses of acknowledged piety, 
prudence, and authority in the Church, and who say to you ; 
This comes from the apostles, we have then all the proof that 
can be desired upon these matters, the same precisely by which 
we distinguish the apostolic writings from those which are not 
so.' 

'I grant also, writes M. Leibnitz to Bossuet, 1 that not only 
the knowledge of the canon (of the scriptures) but even of any 
part of the scripture is not absolutely necessary ; that there are 
many people without the scripture, and that oral instruction, or 
tradition, may supply its defect.' Compare this acknowledg- 
ment with the principle of the reformation. M. Leibnitz gives 
more to tradition than St. Irenaaus asked for it in the second 
century. 

He had said in a preceding letter : 2 ' The question is whether 
the revealed truths are all of them in the sacred scripture, or 
are come at least from apostolic tradition, which is not denied by 
many of the more accommodating among protestants.' Upon 
which the illustrious prelate observes : ' We are not here disput- 
ing about apostolic traditions, since you yourself say that the 
more accommodating, that is, as I understand, not only the most 

i Letter the 3Cth in the CEuvres de Bossuet, torn. xi. Paris edition in 4to 1778. 
* Letter the 31st Ibid. torn. ii. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 135 

learned, but also the most judicious protestants, do not deny it, 
as I believe in fact I have remarked in your learned Calixtus and 
his disciples.' 1 

31. Leibnitz moreover, or rather M. Molanus, skilful associ- 
ate in the project of conciliation, treats tradition or the unwrit- 
ten word as follows. 2 ' What disputes are started upon this sub- 
ject ! They may easily be terminated by saying that the question 
between us and the Catholics is not whether there are traditions, 
but whether there are any articles necessary for salvation, which 
are not in scripture, or which cannot be fairly inferred from it. 
This latter is what protestants deny. But the more moderate 
amongst them are agreed that we are indebted to tradition not 
only for the scripture, but also for its true and orthodox sense to 
the fundamental articles; not to speak of other things which 
Calixtus, Horneius, and Chemnitius have long since acknowledged 
can not be known, except by this means. Certainly those among 
the protestants who receive, with the apostles' and the Athana- 
sian creed, the five first general councils and the councils of 
Orange and Melevis, with the agreement of at least the five 
first ages, as a second principle in theology, in such manner that 
the fundamental articles cannot be otherwise explained than they 
h nre been by the unanimous consent of the doctors, will scarcely 
have- wherewith to dispute with the Church of Rome.' The ob- 
servation of M. Bossuet upon this chapter of M. Molanus is very 
short. ' As for what relates to tradition the same author is agreed 
with us, that we are indebted to it not only for the Holy Scrip- 
ture, but also for the legitimate and natural interpretation of this 
Scripture, and that there an' truths thai we dannot know except 
by its assistance : which is quite sufficient for us: so that on this 
article we are completely reconciled, if we are to believe this 
learned writer.' 3 

It may appear Btrange t<> you, and yet it is very true, that the 
man who perhaps had the must to do with the drawing up of 

1 Lett ir thr 32nd in the 'A'"' ret <<■ Bb <■"'. torn. ii. Paris edition in 4to 1778 
• QBuvres pcethume* </< Bossuet, voL I. p. 08. Amsterdam edition in 4to. 1753.' 
3 (Euvred po8thnmee de Uo^uet, vol. I. p. 215. 



136 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

the thirty-nine articles, I mean hishop Jewell, continually rests 
upon tradition, upon the fathers and the primitive Church, in 
the Apology that he published in 1562, with the approbation of 
his brethren, and by order of the supreme governess, and also, 
as we are assured, with the unlimited applause of all the protes- 
tant societies in Europe. Here then is the authority of tradition 
recognized, invoked, and appealed to in their own defence by 
the spiritual lords of the convocation, at the very time they had 
just been rejecting it indirectly, by declaring that the scripture 
alone was to be applied to for every essential of salvation. Let 
these gentlemen settle it among one another as they know best. 
As for myself, I throw aside here their sixth article, and adhere 
to the authentic testimony of their apology in favor of tradition. 
In a most excellent work, entitled England's Conversion and 
Reformation compared, 1 I find a passage taken from a protestant 
work, 2 the author of which was probably a member of the Church 
of England. This protestant writer, who is quoted, after having 
considered the precepts of St. Paul on oral traditions, makes 
the following reflections : 3 ' Here we see plain mention of St. 
Paul's tradition, consequently of apostolical traditions delivered 
by word of mouth, as well as by epistles or in writing; and a 
condemnation of those who do not equally observe both (and 
still more a condemnation of those, who despise them so far as 
to put them quite aside as the authors of the reformation and of 
the sixth article have clone.) ' Thus it is evident, (continues he, 
page 78,) ' that the whole of Christianity, was at first delivered 
to the bishops succeeding the apostles by oral tradition; and 
they were also commanded to keep it, and deliver it to their suc- 
cessors in the same manner, nor is it any where found in scrip- 
ture by St. Paul or any other of the apostles ; tJiat they would 
either jointly or separately write down all that they had tetught as 
necessary to salvation, or that they would make such a complete 
canon of them, that nothing should be necessary to salvation 
but what should be found in these writings.' These most just 

1 Page 34 Antwerp, 1736. 2 Tradition necessary. 3 Pages 32, 33. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 137 

observations directly oppose the sixth article, and must be con- 
sidered as an unequivocal disavowel of them. 

I am 1 not of those who admire the great knowledge in divine 
matters revealed in this latter age of the world, I do not think 
there are any now so likely to discover the truth of gospel mys- 
teries as those of ancient days. As for that saying ; a pigmy set 
on a giant's shoulder may see more than the giant ; pardon me 
if I call it a shallow and silly fancy, nothing to our purpose ; for 
our question is not of seeing more, but of the clear discerning 
and judging those things we all see, but are in doubt what they 
mean ; if a pigmy and a giant see a beast at a mile distant, and 
arc in dispute whether it be a horse or an ox, the pigmy set on 
the giant's shoulder, is never the nearer discerning what it is, 
which depends on the sharpness of sight, not on the height of 
his shoulders : Now that the ancient and holy fathers of the 
Church were more spiritual and consequently sharper sighted in 
spiritual things than we carnal creatures of this latter age is evi- 
dent by their spiritual holy lives ; The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the spirit of God, neither Can he know them, 
because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor. ii. 14. And 
how natural, how carnal, how purblind we are, is too visible. 
Besides a purblind man near the object, will discern it better 
than a much sharper sight at a greater distance as we are. For 
if you ask those lofty conceited pigmies why they give more 
credit to the fathers of the second and third century, than to 
those of tin! sixth or seventh, they answer, because those that 
lived nearer the days of Christ and his apostles, are likelier to 
know their minds better than those of remoter and corrupted 
: the reason is good, but mightily confounds those who live 
at the very part of the hill in the valley of darkness and all 
iniquity, and therefore not so likely to discern the truth of the 
doctrine of Christ, preached on the top of Mount Sion, as those 
who lived in higher ascents. Wherefore 1 shall always hearken 
witli due reverence unto what those primitive holy fathers deliv- 

1 From Lord Somer'fl Tract, p. 311. Vol. iii. 
12* 



138 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

cr, and the more holy and more ancient, doubtless more to be 
regarded.' 

Beveridge, 1 the learned bishop of St. Asaph's, after having 
said, to humor the sixth of the thirty-nine articles, that in the 
precepts necessary for salvation the Scripture was very clear to 
all eyes, developes his sentiments as follows : ' In objects of 
doctrine and disciple, if we would neither err nor transgress, let 
us beware above all things of adhering obstinately to our con- 
ceptions and conjectures, or to those of others. Let us rather 
examine what has been the opinion of the universal Church, or 
at least of the major part of Christians : and let us attach our- 
selves to the opinion that has been unanimously adopted by the 
Christians of all ages. For as in the entire consent of all con- 
sists the voice of nature, says Cicero, so in disputed points the 
consent of all Christians should be held as the voice of the gos- 
pel. There are many articles which are not read in express 
terms in the Scripture, and which nevertheless are deduced from 
it by the universal assent of Christians, for example, that we 
must adore three distinct persons in the Holy Trinity, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost; that each of these is God, and 
tnat nevertheless there is but one God ; That Christ is God and 
man in one and the same person (are these articles neces- 
sary for salvation or not ?) These points and similar others are 
not traced out at full length in either of the two Testaments ; 
and nevertheless, that they are founded upon both, is what is 
agreed and has always been agreed by Christians, with the ex- 
ception of some heretics, whom we must consider in religion as 
we do monsters iu nature. And again, that the infant should 

be washed in the holy water of baptism and the Sunday 

religiously observed ; that every year we must solemnize 

the passion, resurrection and ascension of our Saviour, and the 

descent of the Holy Ghost, and that the Church must be 

governed by bishops, distinguished from priests, and superior to 

them ; these articles and others besides are no where expressly 

commanded in holy writ ; and nevertheless, for these fifteen 

1 Latin preface to the collection of canons of the primitive Church. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 139 

hundred years, they have been followed in the public practice of 
the Church : they are, as it were notions common to all, planted 

from the beginning in the hearts of Christians, derived from 

the tradition of the apostles, who, together with the faith, pro- 
pagated in the world these ecclesiastical rites, and, if I may term 
them so, these general interpretations of the gospel ; otherwise 
it would be incredible, and even impossible that they should 
have obtained so unanimous a reception in all places, in all times, 
and among all Christians. 

Among the partisans and defenders of the primitive traditions, 
you may also reckon Thorndike, Collier, Bull, Samuel Parker, 
Bramhall, Dodwell, "Waterland, &C. 1 In fine the antagonist and 
the avowed despiser of the holy fathers, Doctor Middleton, is 
disconsolate at finding so many admirers and disciples of them 
among the divines of the Church of England. ' But though 
this doctrine of the sufficiency of the Scriptures, says he, be gen- 
erally professed through all the reformed Churches, yet it has 
happened, I know not how, in our own, that its divines have 
been apt on all occasions, to join the authority of the primitive 
Church, to that of sacred writ, to supply doctrines from the an- 
cient councils, on which the scriptures are either silent or 
thought defective; to add the holy fathers to the college of the 
apostles; and by ascribing the same gifts and powers to them 
both, (here the doctor is not correct) to raise the primitive tra- 
ditions to an equality with apostolical precepts. 2 

1 That I may not extend my citations too far, I shall content myself with add- 
in: tli- t'oll-iw in^r names of their brethren: — 

Tin; archbishops Tillotson ami Wake: bishops Bilson, Montague, Andrews, 

Bramhal, Kail, Overal, Peploe, Patrick, and Forbes: the honora- 

ble M. Campbell, and Sir Edwd. Dering: doctors Field, tlammondy Sherlock-, 

I. --lie, Care, Chillingworth, G-rabe, Bisse, Reeve, Knight, Eickes, Laurence, 

Walt, Bretl : and M sssrs. Bingham, Johnson, Griffith and Daille. 

The passages from these authors will ho found cited in the interesting work of 

]),. W'i-.. !: !l -linr, , ,v •.. from page 40 to page 78, second edition, London, 1752. 

, luctory hi course, p. <;7. '•• a/ree inquiry in'" <h<- miraculous powers, dkc. 

\i. Conyera Middleton, principal librarian of the University of Cambridge, Edit. 

in Ho London, 17.V2. 

Bui whal are we to say bf tins Dr. Middleton, who after having opened all the 
iiiomi;u -m.- of traditi >u, after having cast an inquisitive and p.netrating; eye into 



140 ON THE CIIURC1I OF ENGLAND 

From all that has been hitherto set forth in this letter, I think 
it clearly follows that revelation was at first taught entirely by 
the preaching of the apostles and disciples; that in the course 
of their ministry it was at different intervals and partially pub- 

the writings of the holy fathers, feels himself all at once seized with a religious 
horror, and shudders within himself? And what is it he has seen ? Catholicism, 
good God ! Catholicism in full perfection : He says it, he proves it; and instead 
of concluding that they had done wrong at the reformation, when they rose up 
against venerable dogmas and practices ; instead of preferring the fathers nearest 
to the apostles, and their most faithful and holy imitators, before his religious 
and turbulent ancestors of the sixteenth century: this mad and whimsical genius 
immediately changes his colors, throws aside all tradition and banishes the fa- 
thers far from him; he will have no more to do with them, because he cannot 
surrender himself up to the primitive Church without renouncing his dear and 
glorious reformation. 

It had entered his head, and nothing in the world could make him put it out 
again ; it had then forcibly entered his head, that the mass, its altars, its sacrifice, 
praying for the dead, and of course purgatory, the sign of the cross, the holy 
oils, the invocation of saints, and the honor paid to relics were supertsitious and 
idolatrous dogmas and usages. lie discovers them, however, from the time of 
the primitive ages : he frankly acknowledges it. Well then! these primitive and 
apostolic times shall no longer be considered by him but as idolatrous and super- 
stitious ages : and according to him nothing less shall be required than all the 
lights and all the virtues of a Luther and a Calvin, to efl'ect at length the discn- 
g.ig 'incut of Christianity from its ancient rust, and from the stains of its origin. 
Does not this savor of madness and blasphemy ! Who would not be alarmed at 
the excesses to which even the best instructed might be driven, when once left 
to themselves and their prejudices ? 

I beg you will give yourself the satisfaction for a moment of comparing Dr. 
Middleton with bishop Croft. This latter, far from admiring the great lights so 
much boasted of in modern times on subjects of Theology, is of opinion that the 
doctrine being more immediate at its source, it must be purer and more certain; 
the former, on the contrary, persuades himself, that scarcely had religion been 
promulgated when it became generally corrupted, to such a degree as to be un- 
aole to recover its original beauty until sixteen centuries after its divine founder. 
The one, seized with respect and love for the models of virtue and knowledge 
presented to him in such abundance by the primitive Church, falls at the feet of 
Venerable and holy antiquity : the other, sorely offended at some miraculous facts 
or at some opinions which he found up and down the writings of the fathers and 
which no one obliged him to adopt, is not ashamed to sully their reputation and 
want of talent; he protests nevertheless that he recognizes them as valid wit- 
n sses, and yet in point of fact persists in denying the authority of their testimony. 
The bishop piously declares that he shall 1 >nd them a respectful ear, and yet never 
does so: he remains deaf to their instructions, and in his vale of darkness he 
discovers not, iu their writings, cither the mass or sacrifice, or praying for the 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 141 

listed in the inspired writings ; and that thus it has been trans- 
mitted to the world in two manners, by word and by writing, 
that is to say, by tradition and by scripture, the twofold original 
and sacred deposite of the Christian doctrine ; the one, first in 
point of time and long by itself, gathered together at first in the 
hearts and the memories of the faithful, then deposited by little 
and little, and in detached pieces in the writings of the fathers, 
and the acts of the councils ; the other, of latter and gradual 

dead, or veneration for relics and images, or the invocation of saints, &c. The 
doctor, to make amends, although more deeply confined in the same dark vale, 
has seen, heard, and understood every thing, but takes good care not to believe 
any thing, or to bow to authority upon these articles. 

Here certainly are two persons in whom learning abounds : and yet they agree 
none the better on that account. The truth is, that learning even misleads, if 
not engrafted upon fixed and invariable principles. Never will you find an exam- 
ple similar to this amongst us, whilst you will behold a thousand of the kind 
among your teachers. And ought not this at length to convince the prudent and 
moderate members of the reformed religion, that by leaving to each one the right 
of judging for himself, there will be as great a diversity in opinions as in tastes,* 
and that the wholesome restraint of authority is alone able to subdue the indocility, 
and the proud and capricious impetuosity of the human mind. Bate frcenum 
indomito animali et impotenti ualurce. 

But if we are to believe all these fathers, said Middleton, we are at once neces- 
sarily drawn into popery. Give to the doctrine of the father whatever name you 
please, call it popery, if it suit you. Is it not bettor, is it not safer to be a papist 
with the Austins, Jeromes, Ambroses, Hilarys, Chrysostoms, Basils, Cyrils, 
Athanasiu8e8, Cyprians, Justins, Tertullians, Ignatiuses, and Clements, with those 
;•■ men, those unexceptionable witnesses, who have astounded the world 
by their virtues, ami by an heroic end, and who still edify us by their writings, 
than to continue in protestantism in the train of Luther, Calvin Zuinglius, Beza 
Knox, and Buchanan, <>r, if you please, of bishops Barlow, Scory, Ilodgskin, 
Kitchen, A:<\, who hare rendered their names famous, some by their audacity in 
violating the vow of their firal engagements, others by their servile flexibility to 
tl^- will of the existing powers, some by seditions, wars, and rivers of blood, all 
volt against their mother Church, and not one of whom, to my knowledge, 
has- yet been remarked for an humble and tender piety, for the mortification of 
hi- senses, the abnegation of himself, or the austerity of his manners or for an 
:al and spiritual life. In truth, is it lawful, or is it reasonable to balance 
l> itween the two! And have I not myself to blush here to see myself constrained 
to tarnish the memory of theae illustrious saints by so unworthy a comparison! 

• Doctor Middleton acknowledges this in express terms. ' It is every man's right 
to judge for himself, and difference of opinion is us natural to us as a difference of 
tasto.' page 38, 16. 



142 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

appearance, but fixed legibly upon paper by the apostles or their 
disciples, a durable and divine monument, which will speak 
forever to the eyes, as well as to the minds and hearts of all the 
faithful : the former, requiring a longer and more laborious re- 
search, and being more difficult of discovery, because it is scat- 
tered and spread through a greater number of monuments, and 
is often found mixed up with many subjects, which though not 
absolutely foreign to revelation, are nevertheless not it: the lat- 
ter, full of an inspired and heavenly doctrine, but which is 
sometimes inaccessible in its sublimities, and like every written 
law, never being able, without an interpreter and judge to make 
itself understood and followed with uniformity. The Scripture 
more copious without comparison, more rich, more precious, more 
excellent, and nevertheless leaving some articles to be desired ; 
tradition destined above all to transmit to us these same articles, 
by supplying what is wanting in the sacred books. Whence it 
follows again, that if it were permitted or expedient to make 
choice between these two deposits, and to accept one without the 
other, the preference would undoubtedly be due to that of the 
scripture : but that according to sound reason and the doctrine 
of wise antiquity, according to the command of St. Paul, they 
are absolutely inseparable ; that, one presenting us with articles 
not to be found in the other, we must bring together and consult 
them both, to form a whole and know the complete system of 
revelation ; that, as for the rest, coming to us, as on two paral- 
lel lines, they can never impede or oppose one another in their 
progress, but that on the contrary they render each other a 
mutual assistance, and reciprocally throw light upon each other; 
in fine, that we owe equally to what either of them contain*, 
both our respect and our submission, because the same spirit 
which directed the pen of the apostles, directed also their tongue, 
and the words that came from their mouth are not less divine 
than those that they afterwards traced out with their hand. 



AJSTD THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 143 

LETTER V. 
On the Doctrines Taught by the Church. 

On reading the preceding letter, I anticipate there may pro- 
bably have arisen a difficulty in your mind. How can we be 
certain, will you have said, that such or such a doctrine is truly 
of apostolic tradition, that such an article, sufficient traces of 
which I do not find in Scripture, has been actually taught by 
the apostles and faithfully transmitted from them to us? This 
point, I flatter myself, shall soon be cleared up for you, if you 
will h-ave the patience to examine what I have to lay before you, 
and if I succeed in expressing to you with perspicuity those 
ideas which I shall now attempt to develope. 

If each of us was obliged to distinguish among many articles, 
those which come from tradition, and those which do not, he 
would find himself, in a general way, condemned to a labor above 
his strength. In fact, that part of the preaching of the apostles 
which they did not commit to writing, was at first confided solely 
to the memory of the faithful, fixed in particular Churches by 
th" oral and successive instructions of the first bishops and af- 
terwards collected partially and as occasion fell out, in the wri- 
tings of the fathers, and in the acts of the synods and councils. 
Whence it follows, that to prove that such an article is truly of ' 

lie tradition, we must consult the belief of the particular 
Churches, examine carefully the acts of the councils and the 
voluminous writings of the fathers of the Greek and Latin 
Churches. Who does nol Bee thai this labor requires a space of 
time and extenl of erudition, thai renders it in general impracti- 
c.iM ■•'.' There are, indeed, to be found men of an extraordinary 
capacity and application, whose taste and inclination lead them 
to this kind of research ; with the aid of the rules of criticism, 
all (bunded upon good Ben e, they balance and weigh authorities, 
they distinguish between what the fathers taught, as individual 
teachers, and what they depose as testifiers to the belief and 



114 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

practice of their time, and they attach with discrimination the 
different degrees of credibility that are due, whether to their doc- 
trine or their deposition. The world is well aware that such a 
labor is calculated but for a small number: and again, after all, 
how succsseful soever it may be, it scarcely ever leads to incon- 
testible conclusions. We therefore are in want of some other 
means that may enable us altogether with certainty to arrive at the 
apostolic and divine traditions. The question is,what is this means I 
Call to mind, Sir, what we have said upon the holy scripture : 
we have clearly discovered that, seeing the ignorance and inca- 
pacity of some, and the pride and infatuation of others, the 
authority of an interpreter, of an infallible judge, was absolutely 
necessary to make known, and cause to be uniformly adopted 
the dogmas contained in scripture. We must say as much, and 
with still better right, for tradition. The same judge, the same 
interpreter that unfolds to us the sense of the divine books, mani- 
fests to us also that of tradition. Now this judge, this interpre- 
ter, I must tell you here again, is the teaching body of the 
Church, the bishops united in the same opinion, at least in a 
great majority. It is to them that, in the person of the apostles, 
were made the magnificent promises : ' Go, teach, I am with 
you ; he that heareth you heareth me. The Spirit of truth shall 
teach you all truth, &c.' They alone then have the right to 
teach what is revealed, to declare what is in the written or un- 
written word : they alone also have always been in possession of 
the exercise of it. No other ecclesiastics have ever pretended 
to it, whatever have been their rank, their dignity, and learning. 
They may be consulted and heard ; it is even proper this should 
be done, and it always has been done ; for they form the council 
of the bishops, and their erudition acquired by long study throws 
light upon the discussions. But as they have not the plentitude 
of the priesthood, they are not members of the eminent body 
that has succeeded the college of the apostles, and with it re- 
ceived the promises. They are then without power and authority 
to pronounce : their duty is respectfully to await the decision, 
and when once it is passed, to submit to it. Before the decision, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 145 

they were at liberty and permitted to discuss the question on the 
opposite side, to support their opinion with the weight of their 
erudition, the strength and warmth of their eloquence : after 
superiors have pronounced, all disputations are forbidden, dis- 
cussion is closed : mixed from henceforth with the simple and 
little ones, the most learned doctors lay down their private opin- 
ions, humbly confess that they were in error, and receive the 
decision of the bishops as decrees emanating from heaven. Such 
is the regulation of Jesus Christ, who suffers not in his Church 
either pride, or bloated conceit, or obstinacy whether in the rich, 
the great or the learned ones of the world. Immediately he has 
spoken by his ministers, he wills that all heads, those even by 
means of which he has made himself; he wills, I say, that all 
heads should with equal humility and lowliness bow before his 
oracles. 

Let it then be established as a principle, that to the bishops 
exclusively belongs the right of declaring what has or has not 
been revealed, that is, what is comformable or contrary to scrip- 
ture and tradition, or simply to one of the two. This is pre- 
sraely the extent of their authority: never does it go farther. 
They can add nothing to revelation : they can take nothing from 
it : they arc its interpreters and judges, but not its masters. In 
teaching us what we have to believe, they point out to us what 
has always been believed : they merely render the belief more 
explicit and clear, there, where before it was more vague and 
indistinct. It is therefore always the ancient faith that thy 
propose to us, and never a new faith that they introduce : for 
revelation is not a new faith which we are permitted to revise 
and retract : it came forth in full perfection from Jesus Christ; 
and his disciples, inspired by him, have faithfully transmitted it 
whether by word of mouth or by writing, to their successors, 
enjoininir them ;it the same time to transmit it with the same 
fidelity to those who should succeed them. 

Thus the bishops, on succeeding to the apostolic ministry, find 
themselves specially commissioned to guard the Scriptures and 
tradition. They had already spent their clerical years and those 



146 ox the cnuitcn of England 

of tbcir priesthood in becoming acquainted with them, studying 
them and meditating upon them. Being by their episcopacy 
become the guardians and interpreters of this double deposit of 
revelation, they have it more assiduously in their hands and un- 
der their eyes. Does any new doctrine arise that must soon re- 
quire on their part a dogmatical decision, they prepare themselves 
for it by redoubling their application, by consulting each deposit 
alternately, by comparing them together, by making deeper re- 
searches into them with all the care, which, humanly speaking, 
they are capable of: and, assuredly, when they shall come to the 
decision, He, icho is always with them, and who is to instruct 
them in all truth, will never permit them all to agree in giving 
an erroneous sense to the written word, or the word that is not 
written. Their common decision will necessarily and uniformly 
be conformed to them, whether they infer it from both at once, 
or only from one of them. You and I might not have perceived 
it in either one or the other of these sources, but eyes interiorly 
enlightened by a celestial ray discover with certainty that which 
escapes a merely human penetration. We can therefore no 
longer admit a doubt respecting any dogma, that the teaching 
body of the Church has pronounced to have been revealed by 
Jesus Christ, that is, to be contained in Scripture, or in tradition, 
or in both at the same time. Learned and ignoraut, the decision 
is for all : not that it is forbidden to those who feel so disposed, 
to seek for the truth of the dogma, either in Scripture or in the 
monuments of tradition : far from that, this study would merit 
praise and commendation, being previously directed and put in 
the way by the judgment of the Church, they will more easily 
trace in it her doctrines. But nothing obliges us in general to 
undertake this laborious and fatiguing examination ; our masters, 
our fathers in faith have done it for us. They have afterwards 
decided that such a dogma is in scripture, that such another 
comes from an apostolic tradition : they are of one accord in 
teaching it : we know it : it is a fact, it is known by the most 
simple : this is sufficient for all. All are equally bound to re- 
ceive with the most unshaken confidence a decision which in it- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 147 

self is the most impartial and the most imposing that can be 
found upon earth, and which moreover, heaven has engaged to 
raise to infallibility. 1 

As this doctrine has been hitherto quite a stranger to you, 
and as it properly constitutes the distinctive characteristic be- 
tween the Catholic Church and all protestant societies, allow me 
to lay it open to you in a new light, in order to make you more 
sensible of it. In the first place, always keep in mind that, ac- 
cording to all our proofs, the promise of infallibility made in 
the apostles to their successors, does not regard any of these 
personally and in particular, because Jesus Christ does not remain 
for ever with any one, none of them being immortal; but that 
it is addressed to all their successors collectively and in a body. 
Likewise it follows that, if separately and individually they are 
susceptible of error, they cannot, by virtue of the promise, be 
so, when united together ; that whatever deference their personal 
opinions require from us, we nevertheless do not owe the sacrifice 
of our opinion or our interior submission except to their unani- 
mous decision ; that truth being always to be found in the gene- 
ral agreement, it is this agreement we are bound to know and 
follow, since by following it we cannot go astray, and by not 
following it, on the contrary, we do go astray, for then we go 
out of the way and the line that Jesus Christ has drawn for us, 
and we leave the guides whom he has expressly appointed to 
conduct us. Let us therefore be cautious how we ever close our 
ears to their voices, or ever depart from their uniform instruc- 
tions. In whatever circumstances their consent is manifested, 
when once it is known, when once it becomes manifest to us, it 
is sufficient : our duty is to submit, and our salvation to remain 
firmly attached to it. 

And here I beg you to observe that a dogmatical decision may 
be given in many ways, but that it only becomes decisive and 
peremptory in one way, that is, by the general consent, or the 

1 •■ Nothing should lie more venerable upon earth than the decision of a truly 
oecumenical council." Leibnitz, letter to the Duchess of Brunswick. July 2nd, 
L6M. 



148 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

acceptation of the episcopal body united to its head. I will ex- 
plain myself on the two parts of this proposition. 

The bishops, the successors of the apostles, like them the 
guardians of the faith, by the high dignity with which they are 
invested in the Church, possess exclusively the right of inter- 
preting scripture and tradition, and of pronouncing after the one 
or the other upon points of faith. 1 A pernicious doctrine threat- 
ens to trouble or infect a diocese : the bishop has the power and 
the right to assemble his clergy, and, after having maturely 
deliberated with them, to pronounce a doctrinal sentence, when 
he becomes of opinion that this is a suitable and efficient means 
of stifling the error in its infancy. Arius began to spread the 
venom of his doctrine in Alexandria, and had already gained 
partisans by the subtility of his reasoning. The holy patriarch 
' wishing to reclaim him by sweetness rather than compel him 
by authority, selected some priests from the two parties, who 
defended their arguments on both sides in a regular disputation, 
while he, surrounded with the principal of his clergy, presided 
as judge in this conference, to decide the difference by a solemn 

decision He terminated the dispute by pronouncing sentence 

in favor of those who had supported the divinity and eternity of 
the Son of God, and forbad Arius to teach or to hold an opinion 
that destroyed the foundations of the Christian religion.' 2 

With how much more reason does this same right pre-eminently 
belong to him, who presides over the entire episcopacy, and who, 
from the centre of unity where he holds bis see, extends his 
superin tendance and jurisdiction over all the Churches of the 
world ? Accordingly we find, even from the most remote periods, 
that the greater part of dogmatical decisions have originated from 
this principal see, from which beams tbe ray of government, ac- 
cording to an expression as correct as it is brilliant. 3 If you 

1 " Episcopura oportet judicare, interpretari, consecrare." Pontif. Rom. in 
fol. p. 50. The bishop is the only ordinary and natural judge of whatever re- 
gards religion, and it is for him to decide upon questions of faith and morality, 
by interpreting the sacred scripture and by faithfully relating the tradition of 
the fathers. Fleury, Institute, an droit, eccl. t. I. xii. 2 Maimbourg, Hint, del' 
Avian, t. I. p. 17 and 1. 3 Sermon su l'runite. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 149 

consider on the one hand the ever active vigilance exercised by 
the vicar of Jesus Christ over all the Churches ; on the other, 
those intimations which, in great causes, every bishop thinks 
himself bound to forward to him, you will easily conceive that 
nothing essential in religion could escape his knowledge, nothing 
of importance occur at the most distant extremities, without be- 
ing immediately echoed to the centre, and then, without giving 
time to the error to increase, without waiting for the bishops to 
assemble in council, the chief pastor goes before the evil, drags 
to light the rising heresy, solemnly condemns it, and against it, 
produces to the eyes of the world, the ever pure and indefectible 
tradition of the holy see. 

We learn also from the history of the Church that the bishops 
of a province or an empire, frequently united together in private 
councils, and that there, to ward off the blows aimed against faith, 
they have proscribed erroneous opinions, and taught the true 
doctrine of revelation in their dogmatical decrees. 

Here then are doctrinal decrees given in three different man- 
ners, or coming from three different tribunals. Each of these 
decisions has an authority proper to itself, and proportioned to 
the tribunal from which it emanates : yet none of them is deci- 
sive, although it may become so by acceptation. For if the 
iecrees of a private council, or of the sovereign pontiff, or even 
that of a private bishop is found to be received and generally 
approved of by the bishops dispersed throughout Catholicity, and 
by the pope at the head of all, they then become the decrees of 
the universal Church ; their being generally received attaches to 
tliem the seal of infallibility and ranks them thenceforward 
11 ninng the articles of faith. 

There occur, in fine, less frequent but graver and more solemn 
occasions, on which the Church explains and proclaims its doctrine 
in the most imposing and most splendid manner. For example, 
a pernicious doctrine, after having infested the country where it 
Bprurig up, reaches the neighboring nations, is propagating 
through more distant countries, and threatens to extend its ra- 
vages still further ; a general plague requires a co-extensive 



150 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

remedy : from all parts of the world, at the request or with the 
consent of the sovereigns, the bishops are convoked by the head 
of the Church : they anathematize the innovators and their 
opinions, both to fix in the faith those who have hitherto pro- 
fessed it, and to bring back those who have strayed from it : 
they proclaim to the world what Jesus Christ has revealed. I 
do not enter with you into the questions that are discussed 
among divines, on the conditions requisite to constitute these 
councils, called general in spite of the weak minority of the 
bishops who compose them compared with those who do not assist 
at them. What is incontestable and acknowledged is, that the 
acceptation of the published decrees gives to these councils the 
splendid proof of their being oecumenical, and thus puts out of 
doubt and in full evidence the infallibility of their doctrine. 

I could justify the principles I have just laid down, by the 
testimony of a multitude of writers : of these I shall cite but 
one, who was the light of his own age, and will be the light of 
ages to come. ' The last mark we can have that a council or 
assembly truly represents the Catholic Church, is when the 
whole body of the episcopacy, and the whole society that makes 
profession of receiving instruction from it, approves and receives 
it : this is the last seal to the authority of this council, and of 
the infallibility of its decrees.' 1 ' The council of Orange, of 
which mention is made iu the Reply, was nothing less than gen- 
eral. It contained chapters whom the pope had sent. There 
hardly were twelve or thirteen bishops in this council. But 
because it was received without opposition, its decisions are no 
more rejected than those of the council of Nice ; because every 
thing depends upon the consent, or general agreement of the dis- 
persed Church. Even the author of the Reply (Leibnitz or 
Molanus) admits this truth, that every thing depends on the 
certainty of the consent. The number is nothing, says he, when 
the agreement is notorious. There were but few bishops of the 
west in the council of Nice ; none in that of Constantinople ; in 

1 Bossuet's reply to various letters of M. Leibnitz. Letter xxii. p 115. vol. 
xi. edit, in 4to. 17<X 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 151 

those of Ephesns and Chalcedon, only the pope's legates ; and 
so of others. But because all the world agreed, or have since 
agreed, these decrees are the decrees of the world. If we 
choose to go still higher. Paul of Samosata was only condemned 
by a private council, held at Antioch ; but because its decree 
was addressed to all the bishops of the world, and was received 
by them (for it is in this that all its virtue consists and without 
this the address would avail nothing), this decree is unchange- 
able.' 1 

I thoroughly understand your theory, you reply, and perhaps 
it would be more easy for you to persuade me of it, than to get 
it adopted by a great number of your Catholics. Formerly I 
traveled in Italy ; I questioned some doctors of that country, 
and heard them reason quite otherwise upon this point. They 
maintained that infallibility, which according to you belongs to 
the episcopal body, was the personal attribute of the vicar of 
Jesus Christ ; and they were within a trifle of treating as heresy 

1 Ibid. p. 120, 121. And again in the Defense an Clerge de France, Liv. viii. 
iii. 'After the dissolution of the first council of Constantinople, pope Damasus 
assisted in person at that of Rome, held by the western bishops who rendered 
the council of Constance oecumenical, by consenting to its decrees.' And in ch. 
V. of the same book, I find nearly the same thing in one of the circular letters 
written after the council of Chalcedon. These are the words : 'Almost all the 
bishops of tie west, with common consent, and with them the holy archbishop of 
Koine (Saint Leo), have confirmed! with their voice and in writing, the decisions 
of ill" holy fathers assembled at Chalcedon.' And again, ch. IX. he cites these 
words of Pope Gelasius : 'An illegitimate council is neither received by all the 
Chinch, nor specially approved of by the Holy Sec.'* Thus it is necessary that 
tlif approbation of tin; principal Churches should appear with more distinction, 
it i- true, than that of other Churches ; hut it in not less necessary, that the con- 
s ni of the whole Church should take place. The consent of the Holy See, or if 
you please, its confirmation, joined to the approbation of the universal Church, 

i therefore, ill" final testimony of the canonicity of a council This 

general testimony is not only calculated to confound malignant interpretation?, 
bui also sometimes to remove tin- difficulties of the best of people, who although 
Convinced of the infallibility of the Oecumenical councils, may honestly have Unit- 

i( ui.t- whether such a council is oecumenical Thus we have great reason 

to be com tnced thai the consent of the universal Church, joined to the confirma- 
tion of the Holy See. form- the final "■«' <l< •/.,,, proof of a council being cecu- 

iii iii' al. 

• Gelus. Epist. \H ad Epit hard. 



152 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

the contrary opinion of the Gallicans. Thus then you are in- 
volved in an intestine war upon a most important article. For 
it is not enough for you to believe that the Church has by your 
divine legislator been put in possession of so high a preroga- 
tive : you ought moreover to know in what part of the Church 
this possession resides : if it were in the general body of the 
bishops, as would result from your proofs, it is inconceivable 
that this general body does not know that this prerogative be- 
longs to them. But you have yet to learn in what part of the 
Church to fix it, some placing it in the sovereign Pontiff, others 
in the oecumenical council, by which the universal body of bishops 
is represented. First agree together among yourselves, if you 
please, before you require protestants to come into your opinion.' 
I am very well pleased, Sir, that you furnish me an opportu- 
nity of replying to this difficulty : your ministers have repeated 
it to us a hundred times : it is plausible, T do not deny it. I will 
give you satisfaction on this point, as briefly as possible. 1st, 
There is a point, which the Catholics of all countries fall in with 
and which suffices to produce an acknowledgment from all parties 
of the supreme and infallible authority. In fact, those who 
place it in the chief bishop maintain also that it never can hap- 
pen that the great number of bishops should separate from him. 
Therefore, where the majority of the bishops visibly appears 
according to both parties, is infallibility to be found : according 
to us who attribute it to this majority ; and according to them, 
who teach that the pope can never be separated from it in sol- 
emn decisions. On both sides therefore it is granted that in- 
fallibility is inseparable from the great number of pastors. 
2ndly, There is another principle on which we agree with the 
advocates of papal infallibility. They have no difficulty in ac- 
knowledging that the majority of the bishops is infallible when 
united to the successors of St. Peter ; and we have still less in 
acknowledging him infallible when united to the majority of the 
bishops. Thus on both sides the strength consists in the union 
of the head with the members: thus on both sides there is al- 
ways infallibility where the great number of the pastors is united 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 153 

to him who is at their head. And in point of fact, they are 
certainly united among themselves : in point of fact, they must 
necessarily be so, they must of necessity agree upon the same 
doctrine, otherwise they would cease to regard themselves as 
forming one and the same body, one and the same Church. 
But if ever it should happen, which God forbid, and which we 
Callicans think impossible, if it ever should happen, that the 
great number should separate from the head, it would then be 
necessary that one of the two parties should adopt the sentiments 
of the other, to preserve the Church from schism, the greatest 
of all evils. 

3rdly, When we examine more narrowly this dispute, so much 
agitated in the schools, it appears that it should be banished 
among speculative and idle questions, and that in the main both 
parties meet in the same opinion. In fact the warmest and 
most skilful defenders of the pontifical prerogative teach that a 
sentence proceeding from the chair of Peter, does not become a 
decree of faith, but by the acceptation of the Church spread 
through the world. They must therefore argue upon the judg- 
ments passed ex cathedra, as we all do upon the judgments 
passed by general councils, the infallibility of which is recog- 
nised by every Catholic ; and say with us : It is by the accepta- 
tion, that we are convinced that a council is really oecumenical 
and it is by acceptation equally that we know with certainty 
that the pope has pronounced ex cathedra. Thus we all agree 
in the same principle; and both are ultimately found to attach 
the seal of infallibility to the universal agreement of the Church. 1 

I cannot refrain from giving you in conclusion the satisfaction 
of reading your difficulty and the reply drawn out with a mas- 
ter-hand. ' Protestants reproach us with investing the Church 
with an infallibility, for which we can find no subject, since some 
place it in the pope alone, others in the general council, and 
others in the whole body of the Church spread throughout the 
world. They are unwilling to see that these Bentiments, which 

: This argument is from Bosquet. Sec Coroll, Defens. Civr. Gallic, par. 8, ct 
l)i- art, prcev. parag 21. 



154 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

they suppose to be contrary to each other, accord perfectly to- 
gether : since those who acknowledge infallibility in the pope 
even alone, acknowledge it with greater reason when all the 
Church is agreed with him : and those, who place it in the 
council, place it with much more reason in the Church which 
the council represented. This then is the Catholic doctrine, 
perfectly agreeing in all its parts : Infallibility resides originally 
in the body of the Church. Whence it follows that it resides 
also in the council, that represents it, and which virtually con- 
tains it: that is, in a council, which, publicly acting as oecu- 
menical, remains in communion with the rest of the Church, 
and of which also the decisions are for this reason regarded, as 
decisions of the whole body. Thus the authority of the council 
is established upon the authority and the consent of the whole 
Church, or rather it is nothing else but this authority and this 
same consent.' 

As for the pope, who is bound to give the common sentiment 
of the whole Church, when it cannot assemble or when it does 
not judge it necessary to do so, it is very certain with us, that 
when he delivers, as he is bound to do, the common sentiment 
of the Church, and when all the Church consents to his judgment, 
it is in effect the judgment of all the Church, and of course an 
infallible judgment. Whatever is said more than this on the 
subject of the pope is neither of faith, nor is it necessary, be- 
cause it is sufficient that the Church has a means unanimously 
recognised, for deciding controversies, that might produce dis- 
union among the people.' 1 

1 GSwwes posthnmus de Bossuet, t. I. p. 217. Edit, in 4to. The Reformers at- 
tacked the exorbitant power which, in their time, was more generally attributed 
to the pope, in the things both of heaven and of earth. If they had confined 
themselves to proving that those pretensions were novel, that they ill accorded 
with the spirit of the gospel, with the doctrine of the fathers, and with that of 
the most holy and illustrious sovereign pontiffs, we should then have only had to 
praise their zeal in the support of true principles. But, far from shewing this 
spirit of moderation and wisdom, they railed against the successor of St. Peter 
with the most disgraceful coarseness : they put forth against the Holy See insults 
so low and disgusting, that one would blush to transcribe them : indeed they 
would be revolting to creditable persons of all countries. Men of God would 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 155 

never have spoken as they did. But a man who is not an apostle does not adopt 
the tone of one — he must be an apostle to possess it. Were there no other re- 
proach to be made against the Reformers, who would not judge, by their passion- 
ate and furious expressions, that God could never raise up for the reformation of 
his Church a set of brutish and furious characters, uttering the language of 
demons ? 

If we may be allowed to judge of the sentiments of the Greeks by one of their 
able and moderate writers, here is what Helias Meniates bishop of Zerniza said 
towards the close of the seventeenth century :* 'I consider the dispute upon the 
supreme power of the pope to be the principal cause of our division : ' it is the 
wall of separation between the two Churches If it were possible to under- 
stand one another upon this single point, it would not be difficult to adjust the 
others', and to arrive at a perfect re-union. 'f Placing himself afterwards be- 
tween the protestants and the ultramontanists, this learned man shews to the 
former that the pope, far from being antichrist, is the legitimate successor of the 
apostles, and that he is at the head of the hierarchy of the universal Church. 
Against the latter, he maintains that the pope is not an all powerful monarch in 
the Church, that the bishops derive not their authority from him, but from Jesus 
Christ : he willingly allows that he is the first among his brethren, and that he 
occupies in the midst of them the first place of honor : he maintains moreover, 
that he is neither sole judge, nor sole interpreter of revelation : that he is not 
above the council nor invested with the privilege of infallibility : but that these 
prerogatives belong to the universal Church : that it is above the pope, with the 
right of judging his conduct : he maintains moreover, that Jesus Christ has not 
conferred upon him any power in temporal things, far from having put sceptres 
and crowns at the feet and the disposal of his vicar, whom he made a bishop in 
his Church and not an emperor of the world. 

We say to our mistaken brethren of the protostant Churches : Join us in throw- 
ing a veil over the abuse with which the see of St. Peter has been covered. 
Enter into the sentiments of the informed and moderate ones among you. You 
hare already heard Melanchton: ' There is no dispute about the superiority of 

the pope and the authority of the bishops the monarchy of the pope would 

also tend very much to preserve agreement in doctrine among many nations !" 
And forget not the Baying of Grotious : 'Let the bishops, says he, preside over 
the priests, the metropolitan over the bishops, arid, above all, the bishop of Rome. 
Tiii- order ought always to remain in the Church, because a cause for it always 
remain! the danger of schism.' 

We say to our Beparate brethren, the Christians of the Greek Church: How 
can you prolong a schism, the most direful of all evils, and the most unpardona- 
ble of all crimes, for opinions, which you are permitted not to adopt? They seem 
to yon inadmissible? They seem so to us also. Faith never commanded them • 
do not therefore take fright al them, but become united with us. The concessions 

• The. Stumbling-Muck, B work translated into many languages, t Melanchton on 
the contrary had said, that they should nearly come to an understanding on the sub- 
ject of the pope, if they could agree upon the rest. The reason is because tlie rei t 
is a great deal between us and the protestants, and almost nothing between the 
Greeks and us. 



156 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

already made by the learned of your body are almost sufficient for us. Without 
doubt they would not have refused the little that remained for them to do, after 
the example of their ancestors in the councils of Lyons and Florence. Let us 
unite : we were united for nine successive centuries; and our Churches then were 
both of them more holy and flourishing. 

We say in tine, with all the respect that we profess for our superiors and breth- 
ren of the Ultramontanist Churches, we say to them: You, who would still be 
imbued with the exaggerated principles which in modern times have taken birth 
among you, reflect on all the evils they have brought upon the Church, and that, 
instead of giving to the holy see a power which it did not possess, they have de- 
prived it of that which it really had : reflect upon the calumnies they have occa- 
sioned, upon the inquietudes that even friendly powers have often conceived from 
them : reflect upon the jealousies and aversions they have fostered in protestant 
states, on the pretexts they still furnish to the Greek Churches to continue and 
justify their schism. Do not motives so manifold and powerful imperatively 
command the sacrifice, or at least the silence of some arbitrary maxims? Main- 
tain with us the authority of the head of the Church. Let us maintain it all 
entire. To retrench from it would be to wound faith ; but let us not forget that 
in its plenitude even the ocean itself has its bounds. 

Will you say that, regarding the question as not yet decided, it is lawful for 
you, as in every undecided question, to support the opinion that you prefer? 
The principle is assuredly very Catholic : I object only to its application, which 
I would find in this case to be blind and even reprehensible. Whenever from any 
opinion there result consequences fatal to the Church and to the salvation of souls, 
charity and justice require it to be sacrificed. It is certain that by pressing the 
ultramontane principles, an eternal obstacle would be put to the return of the 
separated communions. I would not at the same time ensure the reconcilement 
of the Greeks with us, if we were all to come to an understanding with them on 
the authority of the pope. They say so, even those among them most capable 
of leading the people. To believe them, your assertions alone keep them still 
separate. And is this not enough to make it a duty for you to renounce them 
or be silent on them? For, I ask you, if the first and most unpardonable of 
crimes be to take off the people from unity, is it not the first of our duties to 
bring them back to it, to say nothing at least that may frighten them from it 
without necessity ? Do not therefore, 1 conjure you, render their return to union 
more difficult but endeavor rather to clear the way. You will at least have put 
the Greeks to the trial : and we shall ascertain, in an affair of the first import- 
ance, whether their acknowledgments were sincere or not. 

But if your opinions seem to you too closely connected with faith to be aban- 
doned, pray keep them to yourselves, until the Church shall have pronounced 
them to be articles of faith. 

" As for the things that are known to be disputed about the schools, although 
the Greek* and protectants are perpetually bringing them forward to render the 
primacy odious, it is not necessary to speak of them, because they are not of 
Catholic faith. It suffices to acknowledge a head established by God to conduct all 
the flock in its ways : and this will always cheerfully be done by those who love 
concord among brethren and ecclesiastical unanimity." Esprit de la duct, cathol : 
sect. 21. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 157 

LETTEK VI. 

On the Eucharist. 

"We have seen that revelation, confided immediately to the 
apostles, had been transmitted by them by word of mouth and 
writing : that by them, the twofold deposit of scripture and tra- 
dition had been committed to their disciples, to pass from hand 
to hand, and from age to age to their successors, whose office it 
would be to seek in them exclusively, and no where else, the 
articles of the Christian doctrine, and whose privilege, to deduce 
them from these sources, without ever being in danger collectively 
of going astray. We have seen that the duty and obligation of 
the faithful were to submit to the uniform instructions they 
should receive from them ; and that the belief of the Catholic 
whether learned or ignorant rested with equal solidity upon the 
doctrine of the episcopal body united to its head. We have 
seen in fine, that this infallible teaching was, above all, mani- 
fested to us in the solemn decrees universally received by the 
bishops of Catholicity. Whence it follows, that we admit with- 
out hesitation as articles of faith, whatever the Church teaches 
us, and proposes to us as such and as revealed. 

Thus we believe and we confess, as of faith, the divinity of 
Jesus Christ, defined against Arius in the great council of Nice ;' 
the divinity of the Holy Ghost taught against Macedonius by 
the oecumenical council of Constantinople. 2 We believe of faith 
that the Holy (ihost proceeds from the Father and the Son, from 
the decision successively given against the Greeks in the general 
councils of Latcran, of Lyons and Florence. 3 We believe of 
faith the unity of persi d in Jesus Christ, with the general 
council of Kph<'sus 4 held against Nestorius, and with the same 
council we proclaim the Virgin Mary mother of God. From the 
council of Chalcedon ' against Eutyches, we believe, as of faith, 
the two natures, human and divine, united and not confounded 

• An. 32f>. *An. 381. »An. 1215, 1274, 1439. < An. 431. •'• An. 151. 
J I 



158 ON THE CHDBCH OF BNOLAHD 

in the person of our Saviour. Original sin, denied in the fifth 
age, by Pelagius, we believe to be of faith from the doctrine of 
several councils of the same age, from the constitution of Pope 
Zozimus, universally received by all the bishops, with the ex- 
ception of eighteen, who were deposed for it; from the first and 
fourth canons of the general council of Ephesus, and since then 
from the decrees of the council of Trent. Guided by these high 
authorities, we believe as of faith, the necessity of baptism to 
efface in us that mysterious stain, and open heaven to the un- 
fortunate race of the guilty Adam. 

So far, Sir, you are agreed with us upon these different points 
of doctrine. Your reformers have respected them ; they have 
found them two strongly imprinted on their own conscience, too 
deeply rooted in the minds of the people, to think of ever strik- 
ing a blow at them. Nevertheless they have said enough to 
give to others more audacity, and soon after to instruct the So- 
cinians that they might boldly proceed still further and attack 
those fundamental truths of Christianity. The right of judging 
having been once granted to each one, there is no longer any 
thing sacred, any thing firm, any thing that can stand its 
groun k 

Thank heaven ! they have not advanced so far in your Church. 
They have continued to believe and teach the dogmas I have 
mentioned, and some others connected with them. Observe 
nevertheless upon what different principles they are believed in 
your communion and in ours. The principle of the Church of 
England is, to admit as revealed and as necessary for salvation, 
only the dogmas which are read in Scripture, or may be duly in- 
ferred from it. And here, Sir, speak to me, I beseech you, with 
candor ; have you learned these dogmas, which you believe to 
be essential, in Scripture ? Have you examined and thoroughly 
searched the sacred text? have you compared the passages to- 
gether? Not, assuredly, that I doubt, that witli the penetration 
and justness of mind that I know you to possess, you would not of 
yourself have discovered the truth of these dogmas in the pas- 
sages of Scripture, where they are established. But as for this 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 159 

examination, this search, I know you have never entered upon 
it. The nature of the business, with which you have been oc- 
cupied, has given you neither time nor liberty, nor even the in- 
clination to throw yourself into theological researches. You 
believe simply from the instructions you have received from your 
parents, from your masters, who in the same manner had re- 
ceived them from theirs, and so on, up to the period of the Re- 
formation. Your belief and the belief of your countrymen in 
general, has not then, if thoroughly analyzed, any other support 
than the authority of your reformers, who never pretended that 
they were infallible, and have most strenuously maintained they 
were not so. See where you are, and how much your faith, 
your salvation are found to be left at hazard, upon mere human 
authority, and consecmently wavering, perishable and faulty. 
But the Catholic, full of the promise, convinced that Jesus 
Christ, who has spoken by his apostles, will always speak by 
their successors, certain that he cannot go astray in the steps of 
guides whom he is ordered to follow, feels himself firm in faith 
and in the way of salvation. He knows that both are built upon 
the Church, as on an immovable rock, against the foot of which 
the efforts of hell shall eternally be broken in pieces. 

Instructed by the same authority, the Catholic admits in the 
number of the articles of faith and of the revealed mysteries, 
that of the most august of sacraments, the Eucharist ; under 
of the kinds of bread and wine, the substance of which no 
longer exist, he adores Jesus Christ veiled, but yet present 
whole and entire. He knows, or may easily know, that at the 
period when for the first time this belief was attacked in the 
till age by Berengarius, a cry of indignation was raised on 
all sides against him: that the ancient faith was maintained by 
the teachers of Christianity, among others by Lancfranc, the 
learned archbishop of Canterbury, and unanimously defined by 
many councils, as it has been Bincc defined in the council of 
Trent. Here unfortunately the lists were entered between the 
Protestanl societies and the Catholic Church, and wo ate about 
to find ourselves at variance ; it having seemed good to your an- 



160 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

cestors, after having agreed with us upon all other mysteries, 
to leave us and attack us upon this. Your convocation of 1562, 
had not the same reason for sparing it, which had made the 
former convocations respect it. From the reign of Edward the 
sixth, the opinions of Zuinglius had been held in esteem; they 
had made a melancholy progress in your country, and even your 
new bishops had not been able to preserve themselves from them : 
in their twenty-eighth article they condemn transubstantiatiou, 
reject at the same time the worship and adoration of Jesus 
Christ in his sacrament, as being contrary to the text of the 
Scriptures and the institution of the Eucharist. 

As to the real presence, which should be looked upon as the 
great article, the principal point of the mystery, they shewed 
themselves more reserved : they say not openly that it must be 
admitted or rejected : they adopt a form of expression that 
seems to accommodate itself to one or other of these opinions. 
It is plain that they were equally apprehensive of alarming those 
who yet held in great numbers to the real presence, and those 
who wished to get rid of it. M. Burnet with more than his 
usual candor and with his accustomed correctness of mind ad- 
mires this dexterous scrupulousness of the convocation. He 
takes pleasure in remarking that the article was couched in such 
a manner as to serve each one's purpose, and that all might more 
easily be attracted and might thus increase the rising Church. 
That an insidious and weak government should adopt this mode 
of proceeding is quite in character : this artful method may 
serve the views and interests of the moment, but is it agreeable 
with an eternal and divine religion ? Is it not unworthy of the 
episcopal character ? Faith knows no such temporizing measures, 
such vagueness and indecision : its course is upright ; its lan- 
guage simple, precise, and decided. It enters into no compacts 
with error, because it can have no alliance with it. In truth, 
these political expedients of your spiritual lords sufficiently dis- 
closed their secret thoughts, and a man must have been very 
simple indeed to let himself be deceived by such pitiful artifices : 
for, in fine, if all or the greater part had believed the real 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 161 

presence, they would have thought it a point of duty and honor 
to have loudly professed it, and to have warned their flocks 
against the heresy, by condemning with a sacerdotal vigor the 
opinions of Zuiuglius. They did not then for the most part be- 
lieve it, their silence shews they did not. Why then did they 
w--t immediately proceed openly to condemn it ? What mean 
this embarrassment, these snares, these concerted concealments ? 
Sou discover here, Sir, the inevitable*, march of error. At all 
times it has shewn itself timid and hesitating at the commence- 
ment, and its first steps have always been faltering and un- 
certain. 

I should but Use my right, were I to refuse all futher discus- 
sion, and refer you, upon the Eucharist as upon all other articles 
of faith, to the decisions pronounced by the Church. I have 
established its authority : I have shewn that it received it from 
its divine Founder ; that when he was leaving the earth he be- 
queathed it to his apostles, and, in their persons, to those who 
should succeed them in the ministry : that he had never ceased 
to teach by their instrumentality and would continue to the end 
of the world to teach by that of their successors : that, in conse- 
quence, the doctrines of the Church will always be protected 
from error; that, by hearing the Church, we hear Jesus Christ; 
and by despising the Church we despise Jesus Christ. You have 
n the proofs of all this : they have appeared to you convincing. 
And if the impression they have made upon you is weakened, 
read them over again : subject them, if you please, to a new 
lination. But when once a person is convinced of their 
solidity, there is no longer room for hesitation. The decision is 
past, every thing is said: all that remains is to accept it and 
submit to it. This simple, and at the same time safe method 
abridges for every Catholio, whether learned or ignorant, the 
interminable difficulties that exist in protestanl societies. 

Bui the arguments you have often heard opposed to the be- 
lief of Catholics upon this mystery, those that you have read in 
the writings of your teachers bave made a deep impression upon 
you. They frequently return to your mind, and balance, as 



162 ox the church of England 

you say, the force of the general inference drawn from an in- 
fallible authority. Well! then, Sir, I am willing to enter with 
you into the heart of this controverted point: I engage to jus- 
tify to you the decrees of the Church upon the Eucharist, and 
to shew you their conformity with the doctrine of Jesus Christ. 
I forsee its full extent : I have it at one glance with all its proofs 
before my eyes. Oh ! that I could but lay it before your eyes 
with the same rapidity ! bjit the dissertation must necessarily be 
long : you must submit to it : it is necessary for your peace of 
mind : the subject is all important. I should also be apprehen- 
sive that my silence might appear to you a tacit acknowledgment 
of the weakness of my cause : and I ought not to give your 
teachers this kind of advantage in your mind. 

Before we set about developing the proofs, it will be well to 
remove certain general difficulties, which might diminish their 
effect. These difficulties are produced, in some, by the false 
notions conjured up by a heated imagination ; in others by spe- 
cious reasons, which seem to demonstrate the physical impossi- 
bility of the real presence. The first are indignant at the very 
idea of the consequences which they imagine themselves obliged 
to admit. If Jesus Christ were really present in the Eucharist, 
he would then, say they, be abandoned to the mercy of the 
wicked : he would have put himself into the power of his crea- 
tures, by giving them the power of offering to his adorable body 
the most shameful indignities ; of casting him to animals, of 
dragging him in the mud, and treading him under foot. But, 
in the first place, these persons do not reflect that similar objec- 
tions might be made against the presence of God which they 
admit in the universe. They will reply no doubt, that God is 
not present in all places in substance, as we say the Eucharist 
is but only by his infinite knowledge and by the action of an 
unlimited power. Were the observation correct, the objections 
would not the less forcibly recur : for does it not seem unworthy 
of his supreme majesty that his pure and immortal eye should 
be open to every scene of horror and debauchery ? What rep- 
resentations, what work full of folly and turpitude, what dis- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 163 

gusting and infamous images find place in the divine conceptions, 
and become reflected upon the increated Word ? Far from us 
however be such illusions ! God sees all crimes, and his eye is 
not defiled: he knows them, and the purity of his essence re- 
mains uninjured. 1 Aud let us equally be on our guard how we 
believe that the profanations exercised upon a consecrated host 
can touch and affect the person of Jesus Christ. The only right 
he has granted his ministers over it, is to be able, at their will, 
to render it present upon the altar, and that in a manner which 
it is not given them to comprehend. The wicked may indeed, 
profane the veils under which he conceals himself, may prosti- 
tute them to unclean animals : may throw them into the mud 
or under their feet : for he abandons to their mad outrages the 
cover he places between himself and them, of itself contempti- 
ble and common, it is true, and yet most deserving our respect 
and our veneration from the presence of the sacred guest, whom 
it holds concealed from our eyes. Here their profanations stop : 
they reach not his adorable body, on which he gives them no 
hold : inaccessible to all their senses, he is also screened from 
all their attempts: and not less impalpable than invisible, in the 
midst of the most shameful outrages, his divine person remains 
ct riKilly impassible and inviolable. 

Others borrow their arguments from still more abstracted 

1 Saint Peter Chrysologus, archbishop of Ravenna, * sneaking of the woman 
who came secretly behind our Saviour, and touched the hem of his garment, as 
if | . gain from aim by Btealth the cure of the flux of blood under which she had 
labored for twelve years, makes the following reflection: 'She knew that the 
Divinity could neither be tarnished by the touch, nor offended at the sight, nor 
i ijnred by the h taring, aor stained by the thoughts of man. For if the sun by 
i 1 - rays cornea in contact with dirl ami liltli without, being defiled, with how 
ipa li more reason can the Creator of the sun come in contact with any thing 
whatsoever, without contracting the leasl stain or defilement ?' f 

Origen had -ail before him : ' Celsua i-nagines that the divine nature is defiled 
,,- iii it it i- mixed up with defilement whether in remaining in the womb of a 
w .nan until its body was formed there, or in assuming this same body. It is 
1,:. ■ ii„.-.- who believe that the raj - of Hi" sun are sullied by passing over Bloughs 
or bad m,i. -IN, ami that tl, ■•;, do not preserve all their purity.' Again t OeUm 
Bedh IV. n. 326. 

* An. 331- t Sermon 30. 



164 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

metaphysical sources, and with an air of triumph display to us 
their pretended demonstrations of the impossibility of one body 
existing in many places at the same time. Their triumph with- 
out dispute, would be, certain, did the question turn upon a 
body existing in the Eucharist under the same forms and with 
the natural qualities and proportions of a human body : for cer- 
tainly it will never enter any one's mind to believe or propose 
to be believed that a body such as yours or miue can be simul- 
taneously in many places. But we are speaking of a body 
passed to a state entirely different from our own, become impal- 
pable, invisible, inaccessible to all our senses: we are speaking 
of a presence, the manner of which we pretend not to explain, 
winch we acknowledge to be above our understanding. In what 
manner would they shew the impossibility of such a presence 
being simultaneously multiplied, and of the existence of such a 
body in many places at once ? Would they maintain it to be 
more impossible than impalpability and invisibility ? If they 
allow that our Lord could derogate from the ordinary laws of 
matter, to such a degree as to conceal his body from all our 
senses, can he not still further derogate from them so as to ren- 
der it present in many places at once ? Have we a sufficient 
knowledge of the properties of matter to deny this ? Have we 
sufficiently penetrated into its essence ? For, to affirm the im- 
possibility of any thing whatsoever is to assert that the qualities 
that are attributed to it are repugnant to, or mutually exclude 
one another. This cannot be proved, if we do not know them : 
the first step then is to know them : and up to this time the 
primitive elements, the intimate qualities of matter, the modifi- 
cations of which it is susceptible under the hand of the Almighty, 
are mysteries to man. Whatever progress may have been made 
in the analysis of bodies, their formation and organization al- 
ways elude our inquiries ; in this respect as in every thing else, 
the secret of the Creator has not yet been discovered. I am 
sorry, I confess, for those transcendant geniuses, who, to justify 
their incredulity and overturn our belief, transport us with them 
into unknown regions, and would have us adopt as luminous de- 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 165 

rnonstrations the arguments they produce for us out of sight in 
the void and the night of chaos. What is remarkable, is, that 
they make no difficulty in admitting other mysteries, not less 
incomprehensible than this. You believe with us, I would say 
to them, the Trinity and Incarnation, and have not these dogmas 
tiieir inaccessible heights ? Does not the Socinian imagine that 
he discovers in them impossibilities and absurdities ? You reply 
to him that his objections prove only the limits of the human 
mind and in no wise the impossibility of these dogmas : it is just 
so that I answer you respecting the Eucharist. Does not the 
birth of Jesus Christ appear repugnant to our ideas of things? 
that he should have taken a body and come into the world from 
the womb of a virgin, what is there in appearance more impos- 
sible than this, according to all that we observe of the laws of 
nature and the properties of the human body? that after his 
resurrection his disciples being assembled and keeping the doors 
shut for fear of the Jews, 1 he should have twice appeared in the 
midst of them, how are we to explain this prodigy and make it 
accord with the notions we have formed of matter ? 2 And after 
his ascension, that he should have appeared to St. Paul in the 
same manner as he shewed himself after his passion to St. Peter, 
to his disciples and to more than five hundred brethren together, 3 
do you more easily conceive this ? For we have manifestly here 
the presence of Josus Christ in two places at once in heaven at 
the right hand of his Father, and on earth before St. Paul, to 
whom he shewed himself as he was before. To convince his 
apostles of his resurrection he had caused to be seen by their 
eyes, in his complete humanity, the same members, the same 

' St. John, xx. in. 

• One of your teachers somewhere relates, that the disciples being assembled 
and closely shut u|>, Jesus Christ fling* the doors wick opon (thai is Ms expression 
if my memory Berves me faithfully, it certainly i- the sense of it), and advances 
to the middle of the room. Such is tli • way this rare genius turns and changes 
b he pleases, the narrative of the gospel to accommodate his fancy I This is again 
tb ■ game Dr. Jortm whom I have cited before. 

• Quod januis clausis Dominus ingressus est, biter alia ejus miiacula nunierabit, 
quicumque Sanaa mentis est.' Cyril. Alex, BOBCulo v. 

•I. Corinth xv. 6. 



166 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

features that they had known him to possess before his death. 1 
What will you say again of the dogma of the general resurrec- 
tion, the belief in which is common to us both? Can your 
imagination comprehend this mystery? Do you readily con- 
i ivc the state in which our bodies will then be changed? Are 
you able to conceive that they can without ceasing to be the 
same divest themselves of all their sensual and terrestrial qualities, 
and put on those that are spiritualized and angelical? for, there, 
there is neither eating nor drinking ; there they shall not marry 
or be married, says our Saviour, but shall be like angels. 2 And 
according to the sublime theology of St. Paul, the body ' is 
sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption : it is sown in 
dishonor, it shall rise in glory: it is sown in weakness, it shall 
rise in power: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual 
body : if there be a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.' 3 
After these incontestible truths, admitted and yet unintelligible, 
what means the difficulties you object to us ? To what purpose 
do you create imaginary impossibilities upon a state of things 
that far surpass our comprehension ? If God, as you doubt not, 
destines our sensual and gross bodies for a state of spirituality 
which we do not understand, why should not our Lord be able 
to put his body in another spiritual state still more incomprehen- 
sible ? You reason upon matter such as we see it, and upon 
bodies such as they strike our senses : but here we are treating 
of a matter that is imperceptible, of a body that eludes all our 
senses. You speak to us of an animal body, whereas you should 
speak of a spiritual body. But you will reply, what do you 
mean by a spiritual body': and how are we to join these two 
ideas together? Tn truth, Sir, I am sure that they are joined; 
for we are taught so by St. Paul : but how and in what manner, 
I know not, any more than you do. And here it is that all our 

1 ' Nemo ascendit in coelum, nisi qui descendit de coelo, Filius hominis qui est 
in ccelo. Joan. iii. 1-3. 

' No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that hath descended from heaven, 
th: son of man who is in heaven.' Challoner. These words of Jesus to Nicode- 
nius prove that Jesus Christ was at the same time on earth and in heaven. 

- Matt. xsii. 30. 3 I. Corinth, xv. 42. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 1G7 

metaphysical reasonings upon the Eucharist come to a termina- 
tion, in our ignorance. 

I will add one general observation upon mysteries. Revela- 
tion speaks to us of a supernatural order, and talks to us of a 
fife to come and of the kingdom of God. This revelation comes 
i'roni heaven and invites us thither : it shews us the road and 
acquaints us with the means of arriving at it. Is it surprising 
that in all that it teaches about this unknown world there should 
be found some mysterious dogmas, whilst this world, in which 
we are born, this world, which has been created for us, every 
where offers us nothing but impenetrable objects, every where 
nothing but mysteries? "We see every thing that passes around 
us, and we understand nothing, absolutely nothing. Fix upon 
any object you please in this world, from the smallest grain to 
the majestic cedar, from the imperceptible insect that would be 
wearied with traversing over the head of a pin, to the most 
monstrous animal, from the atom to the globes that roll over our 
heads in a space of immeasurable extent, and with a rapidity of 
movement that the imagination even cannot follow in its flight : 
every thing is mystery to us : every thing, both the drop of 
water that is shed from the cloud, and the sprig of the herb, that 
we tread under our feet, and the grain of sand that is carried by 
the wind, every thing is inexplicable; both that which we per- 
and that with which we come more or less in contact or 
connection: everything confounds our enquiry, everything is 
mystery, and without doubt the greatest mystery to man is man 
himself. 1 Nevertheless we believe the existence of the objects, 
which surround us, and we have good reason for believing it, 
because the proofs of it are most certain. It is then upon proofs 
thai depends and ought to depend our belief in every thing, 
whether in the natural or supernatural order: it is to proof that 
we must all adhere. Whal is proved, whether in itself conceiv- 
able or not, what is proved ought to be believed, and cannot be 

"Mai i to me these inferior terrestrial things, and 

I will believe yon capable of penetrating also intOBnblime and divine things. 
t sv. Any 



1G8 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

otherwise than believed. Whence it follows that our examina- 
tion ouglit to refer, not to the nature of the dogmas, which ex- 
ceed the limits of our minds, but to the proofs of their existence, 
which we are capable of seeing and judging about. It is there- 
fore a very foolish way of setting about it to say with your teach- 
ers : ' God cannot reveal that which is repugnant to reason ; now 
the doctrine of the Eucharist is repugnant to reason : therefore, 
&c.' For then they are forced to enter into the nature of things 
that we all hold to be incomprehensible, and of course to wander 
from unknown to unknown, and to reason in the dark. But the 
method that good sense points out, and that the consciousness of 
our weakness should suggest, is this : ' God cannot reveal what 
is repugnant to reason ; now, he has revealed or he has not re- 
vealed the dogmas of the Eucharist ; therefore, &c.' For here 
we can all understand one another ; here the examination and 
decision are brought to a level with our minds. It becomes a 
question of fact : Has God or has he not revealed the mystery 
of the Eucharist ? If it is not proved that God has revealed it, 
let us all with one accord throw aside the mystery : if on the 
contrary the proofs of it are certain, we are all of us absolutely 
bound to submit to it : you and your teachers must indispensably 
admit it, pay homage to it, and throw aside the vain objections 
of an impotent and conceited reason. Now I wish to enter upon 
an examination of this question of fact with you : I undertake 
to convince you that the mystery of the Eucharist has been re- 
vealed to us, such as we now receive it. 

"We have seen that revelation had been transmitted to us by 
word of mouth and by writing : that, to know it entirely, we 
must have recourse to the two-fold deposit of scripture and tradi- 
tion. I will proceed therefore to lay them before your eyes one 
after the other : and I hope, with the assistance of heaven, to 
produce in their favor proofs so decisive that you will be obligod 
to acknowledge, that this mystery, inconceivable as it is, has 
certainly been revealed to the world by Jesus Christ, and that 
the decrees of the Church upon the Eucharist are manifestly con- 
formable with both the deposits of revelation. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 169 

The holy scripture, — The words of promise. 

Open, if you please, the 6tli chapter of the Gospel of St. 
John, which is too long to be here transcribed entire : and have 
the goodness merely to follow, with the book in your hand, the 
argument with which this chapter will supply you. The Evan- 
gelist relates in how miraculous a manner our Saviour fed in the 
desert the five thousand men who had folio. wed him : how he 
withdrew himself by flight from the transports of their admira- 
tion, and the honors they wished to pay him by proclaiming him 
King : how towards night he rejoined the vessel of the apostles 
in the middle of the sea of Tiberias, walking over the waters to 
them : how, in fine, he himself was rejoined the next day at 
Caphernamn, by the multitude he had fed the day before. The 
conversation between Jesus and the Jewish multitude, which 
cannot be sufficiently meditated upon, commences at, the 25th 
verse. After having blamed their eagerness for perishable food, 
and their indifference in seeking for meat that endureth to life 
everlasting, he tolls them that the means of obtaining it is to 
believe in him whom God has sent them : he reproaches them 
for their incredulity in his regard, in spite of the miracles he 
had performed in their presence. He adds that the manna of 
which he had spoken, and which their fathers had eaten in the 
desert, was not the heavenly bread : that the bread of God is 
that which cometh down from heaven : that he himself is the 
true heavenly bread, that he is come down from heaven : that 
he had been sent by his Father to save them. At these words 
the Jews no longer contain themselves. ' Is not this Jesus, the 
son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then 
garth he, I came down from heaven'?' 1 But Jesus without re- 
vealing to them the secret of his human birth, still leads them 
to his celestial origin and to his divine mission, and insists more 
strongly than ever upon the obligation of believing in his words 
and his testimony. Amen, amen I Bay to you : he that believeth 
in me hath everlasting life.' 2 What is the meaning of this cx- 
' Verse 42. »Verae4T. 



170 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

orclium, and of this manner of opening himself by halves and 
by degrees ? How comes it, that he reminds them at repeated 
intervals of the necessity of the faith due to his character, his 
miracles and divinity ? What is the tendency of these prelimi- 
nary recommendations ? In what are they to end, or what is he 
thinking of proposing to them ? Something very extraordinary 
no doubt, and very difficult to be received ; otherwise he would 
have explained himself without making use of all these precautions. 

The plan he always adopted was distantly to announce the 
great mysteries he was to accomplish. Thus he taught the 
necessity of baptism for entering the kingdom of heaven, before 
he instituted it : thus also his disciples often heard him discourse 
upon his passion, death, and resurrection, and on the descent of 
the Holy Ghost; thus he announced in this very chapter 1 his 
ascension and return into heaven. By admonishing them before 
hand, he kept their minds in expectation : he humored also the 
weakness of man by sparing him the too lively impressions that 
unforeseen prodigies would have made upon his senses. Induced 
by these same motives he gives them intimation of a miracle 
which he was intending to work, and which would still more as- 
tonish human reason. He selected for its announcement the 
circumstance, which had the most analogy and connection with 
the Eucharist, that of the multiplication of the loaves, of which 
the very people whom he was addressing had just been witnesses. 

After having convinced them of all the claims he had to their 
entire confidence, he proceeds at last to declare the object he is 
about, and expresses it concisely in these words, ' I am the liv- 
ing bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of 
this bread he shall live forever : and the bread that I will give 
is my flesh, for the life of the world.' 2 The secret hitherto con- 
cealed is now divulged : the great mystery is declared : it has been 
heard : it has been understood to signify a real presence ; but will 
this real presence be believed ? No : the Jews instead of trusting 
to Jesus Christ as to the manner in which he would give them 

Verse 62. 2 Verse 51. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 171 

his flesh to eat, think only of that in which they eat common 
flesh : they moreover break out into murmurs, look at one another 
with marks of disapprobation and repugnance, and quickly ex- 
claim : ' How can this man give us his flesh to eat ?' They had 
therefore clearly understood him to speak of a real manducation. 

We will proceed no farther for the present. I have here two 
observations to make to you. When we propose to your teachers 
and those of their communion the august mystery of the Eucha- 
rist, do they not immediately begin to contest it? do they not 
shew towards our belief signs of disapprobation, contempt, and 
aversion ? do they not disdainfully reply to us in the manner of 
the Jews of this gospel ; ' How can he give us his flesh to eat?' 
In vain do we endeavor to represent to them that the bread of 
God is that which cometh down from heaven; that 'this bread 
that he has given us is his flesh, that flesh which he has given 
for the life of the world: and that what God demands of us, is 
to believe in him whom he has sent ;' and that according to the 
solemn declaration of our Saviour upon this same subject, ' he 
who believes in him has everlasting life.' In vain do we repre- 
sent to them again that how high or incomprehensible soever this 
real manducation may be, the promise has cpaite as certainly pro- 
ceeded from the mouth of Jesus Christ, and that if it is above 
reason to conceive it, it evidently is against reason to doubt of 
his word, where we cannot doubt that he has given it, and when 
we acknowledge his divinity. They cease not replying to us with 
the incredulous Jews ; ' How can he give us his flesh to eat?' 

Let us for a moment change the scene of action, and suppose 
that one of your missionaries, explaining to an infidel this point 
of Christian doctrine, should produce, without intending it, the 
Idea of a real manducation in the minds of his audience, and that 
t'n'V, being shocked at the proposition, cried out: ''What is it 
you mean to say ; or how shall your God lie able to give us his 
flesh to eat?' What would your missioner reply? Should he not 
say that they had mistaken the meaning of his words; that he 
11 iver intended to propose to them the belief of a real manduca- 
tion: that the flesh of Jesus Christ is not true but figurative 



172 ox Tin-: church of exolaxd 

meat : that his blood is not veal, but ideal drink ; that they have 
only to cat his flesh and drink his blood by faith : that the Eucha- 
ristic bread is the symbol of his body, the wine the symbol of 
his blood : that both one and the other are signs which his love 
has condescended to consecrate and leave us after him, to console 
us for his absence. In this way, or at least something like it, 
would your missionary explain himself in order to remove every 
idea of a real manducation. But does Jesus Christ set himself 
in this manner about removing the same idea, at which the Jews 
shewed themselves so shocked ? What reply does he make to 
the mad insult they offer him, by saying before his face ; ' How 
can this man give us his flesh to eat ?' Let us hear what he has 
in reply. 

' Amen, amen, I say unto you (an affirmation which from the 
mouth of the Man-God is equivalent to an oath) ; except you eat 
the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not 
have life in you. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 
blood, hath everlasting life : and I will raise him up in the last 
day. For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed: 
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me 
and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live 
by the Father : so also he that eateth me, the same also shall live 

by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven He 

that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.' Are you not struck 
with what you have just heard? Is there any thing wanting to 
these words to determine their meaning ? Confess that this lan- 
guage is very different from that which we have heard from the 
mouth of your missionary. Jesus Christ, far from removing the 
idea of a real manducation, confirms it anew in the minds of the 
Jews, shocked as they had already been at it : far from softeuing 
down the sense he had already given to his first words, he con- 
firms it by an oath, and continues to present it perpetually in 
still more energetic terms : far from saying, like your teacher, 
that his flesh is but figurative meat, his blood an ideal drink, he 
affirms that his flesh is meat indeed, his blood, drink indeed. 
In the discourses of the missionary, we hear of nothing but of 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 173 

figure, of symbol, of spiritual raandueation, of a memorial and 
of absence : in tbat of Jesus Christ there is nothing of all this, 
not a word of symbolical or figurative language : in it every thing 
expresses, every thing confirms the reality of his flesh as meat, 
and of his blood as drink, the reality of the manducation : every 
thing declares and supposes his presence in the sacrament. He 
there communicates himself to him who eats it, as common meat 
is communicated to him who takes it and derives life from it : 
' He that eateth me, abideth in me and I in him.' And again, 
he that shall eat him shall live by him as he lives by the Father : 
therefore he shall live by him in reality and in substance, as He 
lives by his Father. In fine, the truth of the manducation is 
compared to that of the mission he has received, and what is 
there more real and better attested than this heavenly mission ? 
Thus you find on the part of Jesus Christ, his presence, com- 
munion and intimacy, by the fact of his body and blood being 
really given as meat and drink : on the part man, the reality of 
the manducation, the certain pledge of life, of resurrection and 
salvation : and all these prodigies attested by the reiterated affir- 
mations and even by the oath of the Son of Cod. What more 
do you want to determine with certainty the meaning he attached 
to his words ? What is wanting in them to convince you, and 
force your belief? After having exposed, repeated and confirmed 
so many times the sense of his real presence, shall not Jesus 
Christ succeed at last in persuading you to believe it: and will 
y>u always say with these blind and obstinate Jews: 'How can 
tliis man give us his flesh to eat?' 

Still one more observation. According to the principle of 
yuur teachers, the Jews could only have been wrong in under- 
standing literally what he had said figuratively, and in taking 
for a real manducation, that which according to our Saviour's 
intention was only to take place by faith. But here by attempt- 
ing to give this turn to the fault of the Jews, your teachers 
themselves are mistaken. In fact, had it been so, Jesus Christ 
would have immediately perceived the error of the Jews, and 
would not have permitted them to remain in it. There only 
15* 



174 ox Tin: church of encland 

needed a word, to correct their mistake, to appease their mur- 
murs, to reconcile their hearts to his doctrine ; and yet this most 
simple explanation he refused to give them ! He who always 
corrected his disciples, whenever they mistook his meaning, 1 he 
who had just performed a miracle to feed this multitude of Jews, 
and had attached them to him by his favors, he who came down 
from heaven but to instruct and to save, 2 he sees them become 
irritated and embittered against him merely from a misunder- 
standing, which he can easily remove, and he refuses to do it! 
he leaves them in error! what do I say? He himself throws 
them into it ! for the strength of his expressions necessarily 
implied the reality. The Jews understood them so, neither 
ou^ht they to have taken them in an opposite sense. It belonged 
to our Saviour to remove from their minds the idea that he had 
given them of the reality, if he had not wished that they should 
believe it; yet he does no such thing. It was the reality then 
that he had in view, the reality that he meant, the reality that 
lie had promised, and that he wished them to believe beforehand 
on the word and assurance that he gave them of accomplishing 
it on a future occasion. 

The fault of the Jews did not so much consist in misunder- 
standing hi in as in refusing to believe him, and if they deserved 
to be condemned, it was not for want of understanding so much 
as for a want of faith. I will explain myself: they understood 
Jesus Christ to say that he would give in reality his flesh to eat 
and his blood to drink; and they had had good reason for un- 
derstanding him so : for, most assuredly it was what he had said. 
They judged that he could not give them his flesh to eat in the 
manner that the flesh of animals is eaten : and in this again they 
were right. What then was their fault? It was this: they 
were not aware of any other way of eating flesh than of tearing 
it with their teeth, either raw and bloody, or cooked and dressed: 
and because this is the only manner they arc acquainted with, 
they conclude that there can be no other manner, and will not 
believe that there can be some other way unknown to them. 
■ St. Mark, xvi. 24. * St. Matt. xvi. 11, xv. 16. &c. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 175 

They come to a decision according to their own ideas, and 
measure their faith by their limited conceptions : and not seeing 
the possibility of what Jesus announces to them they refuse to 
believe it. 1 But had they not often heard speak of him as of an 
extraordinary personage ? Had they not approached, known 
and followed him ? Had they not been witness of many miracles, 
and quite recently, of the multiplication of the loaves? His de- 
portment, his features, his august and majestic countenance, 
from which beamed a ray of his shrowded divinity, 2 his conver- 
sation full of a surprising wisdom, his most holy and pure life ; 
every thing should have inspired them with confidence ; every 
thing should have discovered to them in his person a superior 
character, a prophet who held natnre under his control. In 
addition to this, he had just revealed to them that he was come 
down from heaven, that he had been sent to them by God his 
lather : imposture could have no share in such a soul as his was 
shewn to be, nor could lies proceed from his mouth. The Jews 
therefore ought to have believed in his heavenly mission and his 
divinity ; they ought to have given credit to all his discourses, 

1 What Jesus Christ had already said to the Jews, with what he afterwards 
added in speaking in their presence to his disciples, was sufficient to let them 
■ 1 that they must not adhere to the idea of a carnal manducation. He 
bad already said, many times, that he was himself the living bread, the bread 
come down from heaven : that the bread that he would give them to eat was his 
fl sh, which he would give for the lite of the world: that whoever should eat of 
this bread should live for ever. By these repeated declarations ho gave them 
BUlBciently to understand, that they should eat his flesh under the form or ap- 
pearance of bread, that they should participate of the substance of his body and 
b ■ nourished by it and r the appearance and image of this ordinary aliment of 
iii:ui : and when soon after he said to his disciples that they should see him go up 
to where he was before, was it not for the purpose of teaching them that he 
Blionld not give hia flesh to be eaten in a visible manner, because they should see 
hi u visibly disappear and mount up into heaven in body and person with all the 
.- n'llil e and natural proportions of the human body? Was not this telling them 
that although he should give them hi flesh to eat, it would still remain, as before, 
riving and entire: that therefore he spoke not of ordinary flesh, which must be 
given bO support a mortal life, and to be torn in pieces and consumed when 

e;.i -II '.' 

* Certc f'ulgor ipse et majestas divinitatis occult, qua: etiam in human;! facie 
relucebat, ex primo ad se videutes trahere poterat aspectu. Hyeron. Hbmil. in 
Vatth. lib. 1. 



176 ON THE CHURCH OF BNQLAJTO 

and thon have said to themselves: 'We cannot conceive, it is 
true, in what manner lie can make us eat his flesh and drink his 
blood : but since he has said it and assured us of it, it certainly 
must be possible : he certainly must have means, which we kuow 
nothing of, for the accomplishment of his promise. He is holy, 
he is good : he cannot sport with our credulity: he is sent by 
God, he comes from heaven: he therefore knows all things and 
can do all things whatsoever he pleases : and when once he as- 
sures us that he will give us his flesh to eat and his blood to 
drink, we are immediately persuaded of it; we are convinced 
by his holy word, and without being able to conceive it, we be- 
lieve it.' This is what they should have thought, should have 
said and firmly confessed. Their fault and condemnation lie in 
not having thought or acknowledged it; in having cast aside so 
many motives which required their entire confidence and reliance 
upon him ; in having preferred their own conceptions to his : in 
having presumed to consider him as capable of proposing to 
them what is impossible, that is, of wishing to deceive them, or 
of deceiving himself, and, in this insulting alternative, in obsti- 
nately refusing to believe him. 

These reflections on the unhappiness of the Jews create in my 
mind another reflection ; which makes me afraid for you and 
those of your communion. Like unto these Jews, you reject 
the reality of the manducation that Jesus Christ announces to 
them, and with them you say ; ' How can he give us his flesh to 
eat ? But in you this incredulity becomes much more unpar- 
donable. The Jews did not at that time know of the resurrec- 
tion and ascension of our Saviour, or of the descent of the Holy 
Ghost announced by him, and followed by so many prodigies 
that have renewed the face of the earth. These splendid and 
divine operations have in your regard placed the authority of 
Jesus Christ beyond any thing the Jews could at that time know 
of it. They had seen some of his miracles, an 1 had from them 
concluded that he was the prophet expected in t'lose times. For 
his divinity they had his assertion, and it was sufficient in such 
a parsonage. But, besides this assertion, y u have all the 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 177 

proofs of it, and this is much more. You admit these proofs, 
you profess the divinity of Jesus Christ. Well, then ! Sir, 
either cease to profess it, or cease to refuse your belief in him : 
for to acknowledge him as God and not believe his word : to 
hear him clearly telling you that he will give you in reality his 
flesh to eat, as he has said, and as is demonstrated, and never- 
theless to maintain, to persist obstinately in maintaining that the 
tiling is impossible; this is an extravagance much more in- 
sulting, much more to be condemned, than the blind incredulity 
of the Jews. 

The Evangelist, 1 as if desirous of giving greater authenticity 
to his recital, remarks that this conversation took place in the 
village of Capharnaum, in full synagogue, where the multitude 
had assembled around Jesus. After the care he had taken to 
repeat and confirm so often, as we have heard, the reality of the 
manducation, it would seem that all his hearers should have 
ceased from their original opposition, and believed unanimously 
in his words. A melancholy and lamentable example of the 
weakness, the pride and blindness of the human mind ! Incre- 
dulity, far from yielding to repeated assertions, becomes irritated 
at them. It is no longer among the people only, that it appears ; 
ir reaches even his disciples: This saying is hard, and who can 
hear it?' 2 said many amongst them. Josus, who read their 
hearts, turns to them and says; 'I)oth this scandalize you? If 
fcheB you shall see the son of man ascend up where he was be- 
fore? 8 Let us weigh well these words: coming from such a per- 
SOD they can never be sufficiently thought upon. If you are 
shocked, if you are scandalized at what I say to you, that I shall 
give you my flesh to eat, now that it is upon earth and before 
your eyes, h<>w much more will you bo scandalized when you 
shall see it go up to heaven and disappear from your sight? If 
this manducation appears to you incredible now that you see my 
body, how much more so will it appear to you, when you shall 
see it no more? Hi- doctrine therefore ttras Bucb that after his 
resurrection it would present more difficulties to be understood 
•St. John vL 60. 'Veree CI. 'Verse 62, 63. 



•US ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

than before, and from this I conclude that his doctrine was not 
such as the reformed attribute to him. For it could not become 
more difficult for his disciples to comprehend a spiritual and 
figurative manducation after, than before his ascension : it would 
not have required any greater exertion to uuite themselves to 
their master as a Saviour and a God, when they should believe 
him to be at the right hand of his Father, than when they saw 
him in the midst of them. Indeed, so far must their faith have 
been from finding a greater difficulty in reaching him in heaven 
than upon earth, that it must on the contrary have found much 
less : for the ascension is one of the most splendid proofs of his 
divinity, and nothing was more calculated to excite the hearts 
and inflame the faith of the disciples, than the majestic and rav- 
ishing spectacle of this prodigy. It must, therefore, become 
more easy to them afterwards, to believe in Jesus Christ, to feed 
themselves with his remembrance by receiving the pledges of 
his love, to unite themselves to him in thought, and to embrace 
him by faith as their Redeemer and God. But in the Catholic 
dogma of the real manducation, the removal of his person, the 
absence of his visible and natural body must have been for his 
disciples a fresh difficulty in believing the mystery, and this is so 
true, that your theologians rest upon the fact of the ascension as 
an argument against the real presence, and unceasingly repeat 
to us that he is as far from our altars as is earth from heaven. 
They are blind and perceive not, that, contrary to their inten- 
tion, this reasoning turns precisely to the support of our doctrine, 
by giving it the very character which Jesus Christ here assigns 
to it, that of appearing more inconceivable after his ascension. 
In announcing to his disciples, he insinuated to them and gave 
them sufficiently to understand that in the manducation of his 
flesh there should be nothing for the senses, as they had imagined ; 
and that his presence in it would neither be palpable nor visible, 
since, according to his natural presence, they would see him dis- 
appear and rise up to heaven. He informed them, moreover, 
that they were not to judge of his body as of other human bodies, 
incapable of themselves of a similar flight : that his was to be 



AND TOE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 179 

of a divine nature ; his flesh being that of the Son of God, on 
which he could imprint an all powerful virtue, and which he 
could easily convert into a supernatural state. I beg you to re- 
nnirk also that he is not satisfied with saying to them that they 
should see him go up into heaven, but also moreover go up where 
lit was before. This he said to convince them of his divinity, 
wishing to ground upon this transcendant and sovereign motive, 
the faith which he required of them, and which they refused to 
his words *? Now the figurative sense which you give them is so 
easy, and so much within the reach of our own ideas, that, in 
that sense, neither would the disciples have ever refused their 
assent to it, nor would Jesus Christ have had any need to bring 
forward his divinity in order to extort their belief. Therefore, 
this sense absolutely cannot be the sense of his words ; the only 
one it is possible to give them is that of the reality. 

Your divines have imagined that the following verse brings to 
the spiritual and figurative sense the whole previous discourse 
of our Saviour. You shall decide upon it : 'It is the spirit that 
quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have 
spoken to you are spirit and life." We have already proved that 
the words which Jesus Christ had spoken were decisive for the 
reality ; these therefore cannot give them the figurative sense : 
for it would be absurd to suppose that our Saviour would teach 
at the same time, or by turns, in the same discourse and on the 
same subject, two senses, as opposite as are the reality and the 
figure. There is also a second and still more forcible proof. If 
Jesus Christ had concluded by asserting that whatever he had 
just said must be understood only in a figurative sense, it is evi- 
dent that both the Jews, who had exclaimed against the real 
munducation, and the disciples, who had found it too hard to be 
understood, would immediately have been reconciled to his doc- 
trine, and more tenderly attached than ever t<> their master. 
And yet they all left him, even after hl8 last words and walked 
qo more with him. 2 Their subsequenl departure proves, that 
the disciples discovered in these words no explanation in the 
' Verse 01. 2 Verse GO. 



180 ON THE CTIURCTT OF ENGLAND 

figurative sense, and that our Saviour gave them none of this 
kind, since his only intention in giving it would have been to 
disabuse them and retain them about his person. 

But if you ask of the signification of these words; 'the flesh 
profiteth nothing : it is the spirit that quickeneth ;' I give you 
that which best agrees with what precedes and follows in the dis- 
course of our Saviour. It is well known that in the scripture 
language the flesh signifies the corporeal senses, or the carnal and 
corrupted reason of man ; while the spirit denotes the grace of 
God, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus our Lord 
said to Peter : ' Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, 
but my Father who is in heaven.' 1 Thus St. Paul said to the 
Romans that Christians, 'walk not according to the flesh, but 
according to the spirit.' 2 He details to the Galatians the works 
of the Jlesh and those of the spirit.'' 3 In these and other passages, 
the spirit and the flesh are taken in the sense that I have ex- 
plained : they are also taken in the same sense in the verse under 
examination. Our Lord therefore said, that the flesh, that is the 
senses or corrupt reasons of man profiteth nothing towards the 
discovery or belief of what he had announced. It is still this 
reality of manducation on which he has so much insisted, of 
which he here declares that we cannot judge by the flesh or by a 
carnal reason which profiteth nothing, and that it could neither 
be discerned nor believed except by the quickening spirit, that 
is, by the grace and the light of God. Accordingly he immedi- 
ately adds: 'But there are some of you who believed not 4 » 

therefore did I say unto you, that no man can come unto me, 
unless it be given him by my Father ;' 5 which very much re- 
sembles what he said to Peter, who had just been confessing his 
divinity: ' Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my 
Fntljer who is in heaven.' The reason in fact is that faith is a 
gift of God, and that in order to be more influenced by the proofs 
on which the credibility of mysteries rest, than by the difficulties 
that the senses oppose to them, we stand in need of succor from 

' Matth. xvi. 17. '-'viii. -1. ^ v. 20. -"St. John, vi. 65. 5 vi. 66. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 181 

above, of the lights and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 1 Ac- 
cording to the exposition I have just given you, every thing is 
regular and connected, every thing is consistent in the discourse 
of our Saviour. 

Have you remarked these word : ' Therefore (i.e. because 
they do not believe) did I say unto you, that no man can come 
unto me, unless it be given by my Father? That is to say, 
that there was need of an assistance, a particular grace from 
heaven for believing the manducation that was announcing. It 
was not therefore the manducation, that is recognised in your 
communion, so natural, so conformable to our ideas that it 
presents not even the shadow of a mystery and recpiires not for 
its belief any effort of the mind, and still less any particular 
assistance of divine grace. 

The words which immediately precede, present also a reflec- 
tion which I must not permit to escape ; ' But there are some of 
you who believe not.' Whence comes this reproach of their in- 
credulity *? To what can it refer ? Ask your divines, if you 
please^ and you will see their embarrassment, or rather their in- 
ability to give any satisfactory reply to your question. At what 
then were these disciples offended? What was it they refused 
to believe ? It was not any strong expression which our Saviour 
liad made use of; for in that case he would have softened it 
down: and therefore the reproach of incredulity falls upon the 
things and not upon the expressions. Neither was it the man- 
ducatioo taken in the figurative sense, a thing too simple to admit 
of the possibility of a moment's hesitation; it was therefore the 
reality that they absolutely would not admit. But, in the prin- 
ciples ui' your divines, that would deserve no reproach. These 
disciples thought it *" be impossible; and do not your brethren 
think the«ame? and according to fchem did ool these disciples, 
by refusing their consent, reject what they ought to have he- 

1 Spiritns est qui vivificat, caro non prodest qnidquam: qnod indicat ista 
Splfitaa Bancti auxilio Lntelligi oportere. Carnem enim hoc est rationem bu- 
manain in hiace divinta rebus nihil prodesse, hoc ■• I caligare el Inepttre. ( ! i&vt 

/.. .'li. ,-n„- Cut. 1. C. iv. eel. 167, 
1G 



182 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

lioved, by holding it to be impossible ? They could not there- 
fore merit any reproach ; and Jesus Christ (may he forgive us !) 
Jesus Christ reproached them without cause. 

' After this many of his disciples went back and walked no 
more with him.' 1 Here ask again the most skilful of your 
ministers : ask them why these disciples abandon their master ? 
In vain will you expect a solid reply. They will always tell you, 
and they have nothing more to say, that these disciples had 
permitted themselves to be-staggered at expressions which seemed 
to them to favor the reality of the manducation, which in point 
of fact our Saviour had only proposed in figure. But he who 
saw into the interior, would immediately have seen their mistake, 
and to remove it he had only to say ; ' When I spoke to you of 
giving you my flesh to eat, I merely intended to give you the 
sign and figure of it, and to inform you that by taking them you 
would unite yourselves to my flesh by faith : and are not you 
already thus united, you who are my disciples ?' And they would 
have fallen at his feet and would never have left him. In fact 
it is ridiculous to explain this fatal separation by a mere misun- 
derstanding of terms. Men, indeed, are liable to this in their 
mutual communications, because they cannot read each others 
thoughts ; but it is absolutely inadmissible between these disci- 
ples and Jesus Christ, who clearly saw whatever was passing in 
their minds. Consider their departure from Christ : seek out a 
motive for it as long you please ; you will find it only in the incom- 
prehensibility of the mystery. In vain does Jesus Christ re- 
mind them of his heavenly mission, of his divinity, and the 
miracles which attested both: nothing could persuade them. 
Neither the admiration of his person, nor the works of a power 
that commands nature, nor the benefits they had received, nor 
those which they had reason to expect, could make them over- 
come their repugnance to this real manducation. They obsti- 
nately persist in judging of it by the flesh, by the corporeal 
senses, by a confined and corrupted reason : they deem it impos- 
sible, and will hear no more of it: they withdraw. Alas! too 
> Verse G7. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 183 

often, since then, has this unhappy separation been renewed in 
the world ! How many children of the Church have been lost 
through the like repugnance to believe the same mystery ! How 
many left her bosom at the time of the Reformation, and since 
that epoch, how many were not and still are not reconciled to it, 
on account of the same difficulty of embracing this incompre- 
hensible dogma. Thus the same effect that it produced at its 
first announcement in the word, it still continues to produce in 
our days : the aversion it occasioned in many disciples to Jesus 
Christ, it still occasions in Christians to his Church. 

At the time our Saviour saw himself abandoned by many of 
his disciples, he perceives his apostles, in suspense perhaps be- 
tween the authority of their master and the incomprehensibility 
of his doctrine, humbly maintaining a profound silence. But 
he. wishing to ensure their attachment and faith, said to the 
twelve : ' Will you also leave me ? And Simon Peter answered 
him : Lord, to whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eter- 
nal life : we have believed and have known that thou art the 
Christ the Son of God." Had the apostles here given, as a 
motive of their continuance with him, that they had taken the 
words of Jesus Christ in the figurative sense, and understood 
that to cat his flesh and drink his blood meant to be intimately 
united to him by faith, then it would be fair to conclude that the 
disciples had taken those same words in too literal a sense. But 
si far are the apostles from expressing any such thing, that it is 
evident from their answer that they had inferred from them the 
reality of the manducation, as well as the disciples: but that 
havimg more confidence and being less disposed to judge by the 
//-.>// than by tin- spirit, and corresponding better with grace, 
they left entirely to our Saviour the manner in which he would 
accomplish his promise, although they could not conceive or im- 
agine any. They believed what they could not understand but 
it was what Jesus Christ had positively told them oyer and over 
again to believe : they believed because the words of truth and 
life eternal being in his mouth, he could not himself be deceived, 

1 Vcrsea 08, 60, 70. 



184 ON THE CHTRCD OF ENGLAND 

nor deceive them: they believed, because they knew him to be 
the Son of God, the Christ, having power to do beyond what 
human reason conld attain or conceive. These were their mo- 
tives. Assuredly the easy figurative sense would have required 
none of this exertion. There was, therefore, something incom- 
prehensible to them in the words of our Saviour : they discovered 
in them the ineffable mystery that we discover : and the motives 
upon which they grounded their belief are absolutely the same 
and the only ones on which the Catholic Church has always 
rested hers. 

Let us, if you please, cast a rapid glance over the arguments 
we have developed in the examination of this chapter 

1. Jesus Christ begins by producing the great motives that 
are to convince his hearers of the obligations of believing in 
his words. Therefore he has something to propose to them 
which will be in itself very difficult to be believed. 

2. Jesus Christ comes to the proposal of it, and says that he 
is the bread that quiekeneth, that the bread which he will give 
them to eat, is his flesh, which he will give for the life of the 
world. The Jews take the natural sense of those words, and 
reject it, because the manducation of his flesh appears to them 
impossible : therefore they understood his words of a true and 
real manducation. 

3. The carnal manner in which they represented to themselves 
this manducation, evidently supposes the reality of it, and not 
less evidently excludes the figure. Then, it was the reality 
they understood. 

4. If they had been mistaken in understanding the reality, 
our Saviour would have disabused them immediately. But far 
from disabusing them, by explaining himself in a figurative 
sense, he resumes what he first proposed, repeats it six times in 
succession, and always with expressions still stronger for the re- 
ality and even with an oath. Therefore he had the reality in 
view, and in it he required their belief. 

&. Many of the disciples take offence at the words they had 
just heard our Saviour pronounce in six successive verses, and 



AND TKE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 185 

declare them to be too hard to be borne. Therefore these words 
conveyed the sense of the reality, incomprehensible to the human 
mind, and not the figurative sense so conformable to our ideas. 

6. Instead of softening down the expressions which alienated 
the disciples, Jesus Christ declares that if they are scandalized 
now, they shall soon be scandalized still more when they shall 
see him going up to where he was before ; that is, that his doc- 
trine will then appear to them more incredible than before his 
ascension. Now the figurative manducation becomes still more 
easy to believe after his ascension, and the real manducation ap- 
pears more incredible in consecpience. Therefore it is not the 
former, but the latter which had been announced. 

7. Jesus Christ who never reproached his disciples with not 
having understood the sense of his discourse, reproaches them 
here for not believing. Now the reproach for not believing can 
only fall on the reality. Therefore he had announced the reality 
in his discourse. 

8. Jesus reproaches them with not believing in this reality. 
Therefore they did wrong, and you do still more so, in pronounc- 
ing it to be indefensible. The Jews and disciples judged soundly 
according to you, by deeming this manducation impossible. 
Therefore your judgment, like that of the Jews and the disciples, 
is in direct opposition to that of Jesus Christ, and you are all 
equally condemned together. 

9. Jesus declares that no one can bolieve in him concerning 
this manducation, if he have not received grace from his Father. 
Now, to believe a figurative manducation there is no need of any 
grace, since there is no need of any exertion : therefore he speaks 
ii t of that kind of manducation. 

10. The doctrine of our Saviour on the manducation is such 
that it hindered many of the Jews from believing in him, and 
induced many disciples to abandon him. Now the doctrine of 
the Catholic Church on this point is also such, that it prevents 
many Christians from joining its creed, and has induced many of 

its children to quit it : whereas the doctrine of the reformed, 
whatever be the strength of the expressions they make use of in 



186 ON THE CHURCH OF BNGlflWD 

the Lord's Supper, has never engaged any one to quit tlicm, nor 
prevented any one from joining them. Therefore the doctrine 
of the reformed upen this inanducation has not the characters 
of the doctrine of our Saviour, whereas that of the Catholic 
Church has them all ; therefore the Catholic faith is the doctrine 
of our Saviour. 

11. The disciples leave their master rather than believe; the 
apostles adhere to him, grounding their belief on his divinity 
and his sovereign power. Now the former would never have 
abandoned such a master for not believing so simple a thing as a 
figurative manducation, and the latter would have had no need, 
in order to believe it, to recall to mind his infinite power and 
his divinity. Therefore neither the one nor the other under- 
stood this manducation in a figurative sense : therefore that of 
the reality is the only sense, which can explain at once the op- 
posite conduct of these disciples and the apostles. 

In concluding this article, permit me, Sir, to address to you 
one final observation. I kuow not what impression will have 
been made upon you by this contrast between the apostles on one 
side, and the Jews and many disciples on the other. Change 
the times and the names, and you there read the history of the 
opposition that exists between those of your communion and us. 
I feel with regret every thing they will find odious in this com- 
parison : I entreat them to pardon me for it: it is even more 
painful for me to have to tell them hard truths, than for them 
to hear them : nothing would ever have induced me to do it, but 
the hope of being serviceable to them, even at the purchase of 
their displeasure. We must therefore here again open for a 
moment before j r ou and them the scene at Capharnaum, in order 
that you may see how strikingly it applies to the supporters of 
your reformation. They have renewed it, and they copy it daily 
with so much fidelity that you will see them performing the same 
characters and the same parts as the Jews and disciples ; you 
will see them borrow their language, imitate their actions, their 
conduct and carry on the resemblance even to the catastrophe. 
In fact, when we tell them that Jesus Christ is the living bread 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 187' 

that came damn from heaven: that ijie bread which he gives vs 
to eat is his own flesh, the same that he has given for the life of 
the world, they rise up against this proposition, which is precisely 
that which, in the mouth of Jesus Christ, produced the departure 
of the Jews. Like them they shew a thousand sigus of im- 
patience, of disdain, of contempt: they hold us as foolish aud 
absurd, they treat our doctrine as impossible and extravagant, 
and thus produce again under a thousand insulting forms the rude 
exclamation of the Jews : ' How can this man give us his flesh 
to eat?' In vain do we represent, unless we eat the flesh of the 
San <>f Man and drink his blood, ive shall not have life in us: 
that his flesh is meat indeed and his blood is drink indeed: that 
we learn it from him, who was sent by his Father, and who came 
down from heaven to instruct and save us: that his order is that 
we all believe in his word, &c: they still remain as immovable 
as ever in their past incredulity : they pass over to the disciples 
and repeat with them and with much more bitterness : This say- 
ing is hard, and who can hear it? We persevere in our endea- 
vors to soften their inflexibility : we suggest that this mystery 
is proposed to us by him who is gone up to where he was before : 
that it is unreasonable to believe in his divinity and not to be- 
lieve in his doctrine : these proud men listen no more to us : they 
tivut us either with contempt or pity, and the same reason that 
in Laced the disciples to leave Christ, induces them also to leave 
us. Let them boast now of the high antiquity of their principles : 
t !i--v iii:iv date them, if they please, from the Christian era: in- 
dooteetably they have a right to do so: on this point I recognise 
Hi -111 .is parti. -a ns ami assosiates of the Jews in this gospel, as 
>ra and heirs of the disciples, I mean of those ungrateful 
and unfortunate disciples, whom the Holy Spirit has marked out 
t-i ii- in scripture as the first apostates from Jesus Christ. Can 
a man be a Christian, and not blush at such a descent? Can he 
}>■■ a Christian and nut tremble at the idea of sharing in the 
opinions, obstinacy, desertion, and lol of these ancient renegades. 
For yiir part at least, Sir, reflect, I conjure you, on the dan- 
gar to which you are exposed by the prejudices of your education. 



183 



ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



Have the courage to emancipate yourself from them : it certainly 
must cost you less to quit an opinion which is not of your own 
choice. Imagine yourself for a moment in the midst of the 
synagogue where this important affair was discussed, and that 
you witness all that passes. You distinguish our divine Saviour 
surrounded by his apostles and disciples : You attentively listen 
with them to the words that come from his mouth, and at that 
part of his discourse where he comes to the mystery, you hear 
the confused murmurs, and afterwards the declared opposition 
of the multitude. In vain does our Saviour exert himself to 
persuade them, by repeatedly affirming what he had just an- 
nounced ; the multitude remain deaf: and soon you remark the 
repugnance even of many of his disciples, you notice their words 
of contradiction, and then their entire desertion from him. On 
the other side you admire the firmness, the liveliness of the faith 
of the apostles, and what is more striking through the whole of 
this scene, the calm countenance and unalterable sweetness of 
the Man-God. All this passes before your eyes; I suppose 
you to be present at it. Now what are you yourself going to 
do? you must declare yourself. On what side will you range 
yourself? will you adhere with them to your divine master? or 
will you turn your back upon him with the crowd of the mur- 
murers ? You are indignant at my question : is there any room 
for hesitation ? You say to me : Well then ! Sir, take now the 
part that you would then decidedly have taken with the apostles. 
The dispute unfortunately still continues. It has been renewed 
for nearly three centuries with more violence than at its birth, 
and with still more deplorable consequences. It is no longer 
between the Jews and in the synagogue, but in the Church and 
among Christians : Jesus Christ is still in the midst of them : he 
continues to speak the same language to them. You have just 
heard him : surrender yourself therefore to him. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 189 

LETTER VII. 

The Words of Institution. 

The strange and inconceivable proposition which our Saviour 
had just made in the synagogue, the disputes and contradiction 
it had generally excited among the crowd of his hearers, the re- 
peated declarations of Jesus, which instead of quieting their 
minds and bringing them again to him, provoked the murmurs 
even of many of his disciples : the formal opposition of the lat- 
ter, their defection, their desertion, the more successful appeal 
made to the twelve, their open and declared profession of faith, 
their persevering fidelity, all these circumstances should give 
importance and celebrity to the scene at Capharnaum. Those 
who had been present at it, must have long talked it over to- 
gether, and likewise have related it to those who were not there ; 
the fugitive disciples particularly, to justify their desertion and 
apparent ingratitude. It will then have made a noise in the 
world, as men were often discoursing upon the extraordinary 
personage who for more than two years had been astonishing 
Judea by the wisdom of his doctrines, by benefits and prodigies 
without number. But it is above all in the minds of the apos- 
tles and the faithful disciples that it must have left the most pro- 
found impressions. Amongst those who had left them, they had 
to regret the loss of friends and companions, with whom they 
had hitherto shared their assidious attention to their gracious 
master. Without doubt it cost them much at that time to see 
them no longer by their side: and this striking absence called 
incessantly to their recollection the cause of their unfortunate 
ration. This cause itself, bo very unexpected, so profoundly 
mysterious, musi have been bo them an inexhaustible source of 
reflection, of conversation, and confidential communications with 
one another. What then ! we are one day destined to receive 
truly and really his flesh to eat and his blood to drink ? Yes, we 



190 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

are certain of it, because be bimself bas so strongly assured us of 
it. But wben? How? In what manner? &c. It is natural to 
think that they must have put to themselves a thousand times 
these and similar questions upon this astonishing mystery : neither 
can we refuse to believe that they mutually strengthened one 
another in the faith that they had already publicly professed, and 
that they encouraged one another to expel from their minds the 
various suggestions of the senses, that might present themselves. 
Let us put ourselves in their place. If at this distance of time, 
and with the mere reading of it, we are still so struck and con- 
founded at the promise which they heard, we may easily conceive 
that, if it had been directly and for the first time addressed to 
us, it would have supplied us with abundant matter for reflection 
until its accomplishment. It is also to be presumed, I had al- 
most said to be believed, that our Saviour who saw what passed 
in their heart, would in his goodness have condescended to recur 
frequently to this subject, and that to the instructions given in 
the synagogue, he would have added others to confirm them more 
in their faith, and to recompense the confidence they had so sig- 
nally displayed in his words. It would be unreasonable to ob- 
ject to me the silence of the evangelists on this subject : we 
know very well that they have not related the thousandth part 
of what our Saviour has said. Even by St. John's account, if 
he had attempted to write the whole, the world would not ,have 
contained the books he must have composed. At all events, it is 
most certain that the apostles implicitly trusted to their Master 
for the moment in which he would be pleased to fulfil his promise, 
and that they waited for the accomplishment of it with a con- 
fused mixture of sentiments of impatience, inquietude, love, and 
terror. A whole year passed away in this manner. But the 
time was nigh at hand, the ministry of Jesus Christ was draw- 
ing to a conclusion : and soon does he announce to his disciples 
bis near approaching death. The shorter time he has to spend 
among them the more does he testify to them his affection : he treats 
them no more as servants but as friends. No sooner does he see 
them assembled around the paschal table, than he declares to them 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 191 

that he had ardently desired to celebrate this last paseh with them 
before he suffered :• and a little after, continuing to announce to 
them his death, he told them he should no more eat the pasch with 
them until it should be fulfilled in the kingdom of God ; then 
taking the chalice, he adds that he will no more drink of the fruit 
of the vine, until the kingdom of God should come. 2 At the con- 
clusion of this legal supper, Jesus rises from table, and to give to 
his disciples an example of humility and mutual charity, he 
abases himself so far as to wash their feet. He then invites 
them to the banquet and again sits down at table with them. 
What more then, has he to give to them ? It is not the nour- 
ishment of their body, that now engages his attention, but that of 
their soul. The moment was arrived for the accomplishment of 
his promise : it is just going to take place. Already had he laid 
upon the bread his venerable and creative hands, and lifting up 
his eyes to heaven, he begins to pray, whether we are to sup- 
pose, that the acts of thanksgiving here spoken of by the evan- 
gelists passed mentally between him and his Father, or where 
heard by the guests at table. After having invoked the all- 
powerful virtue of his Father, he makes it fall upon the bread, 
by blessing it: he breaks it, and solemnly says to his apostles : 
' Take and eat, this is my body, which is given for you.' And 
in the same manner after blessing the chalice, ' Drink ye all of 
this (says he) this is my blood of the new testament which is 
shed for you.' What were then the sentiments of the apostles, 
and what ideas must the whole of this ceremony have awakened 
in their minds? Who can doubt that what they had heard at 
Capharnaum was here distinctly brought to their remembrance? 
Those words committed to writing so long afterwards by St. John, 
were therefore still echoing in their ears: 'The bread that I 
will give you to eal is my flesh, which 1 will give for the life of 
the world.' And at the moment our Saviour had said, this is 
my body which is delivered for you. they necessarily saw in these 
word- the accomplishment of the former. The connexion of the 
actual institution with the promise made by Jesus Christ was so 

1 Lake. ecu. 15. i Luke, xxii. 10. 



192 ON TJIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

manifest, they both accorded and corresponded so exactly in the 
things and in the terms, that they must evidently have seen that 
what had been announced to them and what they had been 
hitherto expecting, was then just accomplished. Hence there is 
no hesitation, no doubt on their part : no question is proposed : 
every thing passes in a profound recollection ; and the apostles 
receive from his hand and take with silent adoration, that fi< sit 
which is meat indeed, and that blood ichich is drink indeed. 1 

The exposition you have just read is sketched from the com- 
pared narratives of the evangelists. St. John, who wrote the 
last of the four, has given us at length the words of the promise, 
which the three first had omitted, and has dispensed with the 
repetition of the fact of the institution, described by the others. 
It is very remarkable that the evangelists relating the same facts 
at too remote periods to have an understanding with one another, 
and on that account varying almost always in the circumstances 
and expressions, all three agree, and St. Paul after them, in re- 
lating these words of Jesus Christ: " This is my body, this is 
my blood." This uniformity, no where else observable, denotes 
a particular design of the holy Spirit who directed them, viz : 
that of teaching us still more plainly the essential words of the 
mystery. Considering them in themselves, it is impossible not 
to be struck at once with their simplicity and their strength. This 

1 ' The connexion of the words we read in St. John with those of the institu- 
tion is visible. There to eat, and here to eat, there to drink, and here to drink : 
there fleih, and here fleih ; or, which amounts to the same, body. There blood, 
and here blood : there to eat and drink, the flesh and blood separately ; and here 
the same thing. If this does not shew distinctly that all this is but one and the 
same mystery, one and the same truth, there no longer exists such a thing as 
analogy or agreement: there is no connexion nor consistency in our faith, or m 
the words and actions of our Saviour. But if the eating and drinking of St. John 
is the eating and drinking of the institution, then in St. John it is an eating and 
drinking with the mouth, since it is visibly of such a nature in the institution. 
If the flesh and blood of which St. John speaks is not the flesh and blood in 
spirit and in figure, but the true flesh and the true blood, in their proper and 
natural substance, it is the same in the institution: and we can no more interpret 
this is my body, this is my blood, of a figurative body and figurative blood, than 
in St. John, unless you eat my fleih and drink my blood, of the figure of one or 
the other of them.' iiossuet, Meditations sur V Eramjilc, jour. 33. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 193 

great prodigy is expressed by the plainest and simplest words to be 
found in human language ; men would never have discovered such 
an expression : accordingly it is not from them that proceeds this 
sublimity of expression, but from him by whom the greatest won- 
ders are as easily produced as spoken. These few words were 
understood in the sense of the real presence and of transubstan- 
tiation by the apostles, and after them by all the Christians till 
time of Berengarius and Wicklif, whose subtilities for a short 
time disturbed the Church. It was reserved for the sixteenth 
century to combat these dogmas more obstinately. And yet 
even the leader of the reformation could only prevail upon himself 
to do it by halves. He defended the real presence ; and only 
declared himself against the way in which it was universally un- 
derstood. He had at first desired, it is true, that some happy 
expedient might be suggested to him of getting rid of the re- 
ality, in order to do more essential injury to the cause of the 
papacy : a motive which was assuredly most worthy an apos- 
tleship like his, and which you might regard as a calumnious 
imputation on the part of the Catholics, had not Luther himself 
inserted it in one of his letters. 1 ' But God, says Bossuet in his 
usual style, fixes secret boundaries to the wildest minds, and 
does not always permit innovators to afflict his Church as much 
as they would wish. Luther remained invincibly struck with 
the strength and simplicity of these words, this is my body, this 
my blood.' 

Carlostadtius, archdeacon of Wittemberg, his disciple and 
partisan, proved a bolder man than his master. He was the 
first to leap the fence, and deny the real presence. To attack 
the sense of the reality, in which the words of our Saviour had 
been understood throughout the world, he bethought himself of 
explanation, but one so foolish and extravagant that it could 

1 In hie letter to the inhabitants of Strasburg, he says that they would have 

greatly delighted him it' they had supplied him u iih si good reason lot- dens mg 

the real presence, because it would have fallen in better with his design of incon- 
veniencing (Ik; papacy : Sciens hoc masme modn posse me incommodare papa- 
tui.' * 

• Epirt. ad. Argent torn. vii. fol. 501, an I5S0. 
17 



104 ox the cnuRcn op England 

only have come from a disordered brain. He pretended then, 
that Jesus Christ when ho pronounced the word this, did not 
refer to what he held in his hand, but merely to his own body: 
and that thus the natural sense of his words was : ' This, that is, 
my body, is my body.' This unreasonable and ridiculous inter- 
pretation put his party too much to the blush not to be immedi- 
ately abandoned. They preferred giving the honor of the re- 
newal of the sacramentarian doctrine to Zuinglius, the rival and 
antagonist of Luther, to whom he was a long time a subject of 
bitter vexation, by obstinately disputing with him the glory of 
being the first reformer. 1 Already five years had elapsed since 
Carlostadtius had brought his discovery into the world, which 
paid no attention to it, when Zuinglius, who was held in great 
repute at Zurich, assembled in that city on the 11th of April, 
1525, the famous synod, which adopted his reform. This synod 
was composed of two hundred citizens, all as able theologians 
no doubt as one could reasonably expect to be found among the 
Swiss burgesses in the sixteenth century. Here it was that in 
the presenee of these new fathers of the Church, there arose a 
regular disputation between Zuinglius and the lay chancellor of 
the town upon the meaning that was to be given to the words of 
the Eucharist. Having only to deal with a mere burgess, and 
possessing likewise more boldness and fluency of language than 
he, the cure of Notre-Dame-des Ermites demonstrated without 
difficulty, and to the perfect satisfaction of all these powerfully 
gifted men, that they ought to acknowledge a figurative sense 
in the words, this is my body, as in the others of the parable, 
the field is the world, the seed is the word. These were the only 
examples he produced, having nothing better at the time to 

1 Zuinglius had published that, from the year 1516, before the name of Luther 
was known, he had preached the gospel in Switzerland. Piqued at this his pre- 
tension, Luther wrote to the inhabitants of Strasburg, that he confidently assumed 
to himself the glory of having been the first to preach Jesus Christ, but that 
Zuinglius wished to rob him of his glory. ' How are we to hold our peace (said 

he) while these people disturb our Churches, and attack our authority ? ' 

He declares, in conclusion, ' that there is no medium : and that he or they must 
be the ministers of satan.' 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 195 

produce : for he had not then been favored with the apparition 
of the black or white personage, who came afterwards to him in 
a dream, to point out to him a still more analogous passage in 
the Bible. This council of the burgomaster and burgesses how- 
ever adopted unanimously his conclusions against the real pres- 
ence, and from that very day abolished, by a decree, the cele- 
bration of mass. S«ch is the origin of the sacramentarian 
opinion and of the whole reformation in general at Zurich, where 
two hundred ignorant laics pronounced sentence against the 
faith of all ages and the perpetual doctrine of the Church, as if 
they had been deciding upon some acres of ground, or a few 
scraps of meadow-land near the borders of the lake. The other 
towns that afterwards adopted the same principles, imitated the 
conduct of Zurich, and proceeded just as wisely and canonically 
in their decisions. 

Undoubtedly, Sir, you can have no difficulty in acknowledg- 
ing the absolute illegality and prodigious temerity, with which 
the sacramentarian opinion and the reformation were admitted 
at Zurich and from thence in the other cantons. You will tell 
me that you are but little concerned with what took place on 
this subject in the towns of Switzerland, G-ermany and France: 
that the Church of England alone has claims to your interest, 
and that upon the article of the Eucharist the canonical forms 
have not been laid aside, because the bishops and doctors held a 
convocation which pronounced, indirectly at least, against the 
real -presence, and most positively against transubstantiation. 
T :i- observation, I grant, is not devoid of reason; in fact, we 
p -niive in the convocation an appearance of canonical form. 
Thin is not the place to expose the too positive defects that nulli- 
fied all its aotfl and proceedings: I shall be satisfied with ob- 
serving, in my turn, that drawing its objections from the holy 
Boriptures as all the reformers did, and none of them having 
s •en or found any thing more than another, it will read its own 
r ■f'utation in that which I am now going to give to every thin"- 
that bears the name of reformation, whatever country it may 
inhabit, or under whatever denomination it may be distinguished. 



l'JG ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

"We will examine the difficulties brought against the real pres- 
ence, and afterwards I hose against transuhstantiation. It would 
be useless to treat separately of the adoration, an inevitable con- 
s jquence of the real pr isence : for to believe Jesus Christ present 
in his sacrament, an 1 not to pay to his divine person divine 
honors, would be an outrage, an impiety, and a kind of apostacy. 
Have we not learned from .St. Paul that men at the name alone 
of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, on earth, and under 
the earth ?' 

1 The convocation of 1562, in its twentv-eiidith article, under pretence that our 
Saviour did not ordain that lie should be adored in the Eucharist, suppresses and 
condemns indirectly the adoration we there pay to his divinity. This evidently 
enough unmasked its secret opinion against the real presence and gave the world 
to understand that it banished Jesus Christ from its sacrament. To prove this by 
authorities that it must admit, I will cite those who, like itself, have suppressed 
the adoration ; I mean the Calvinists. 

Beza arguing against Luther, who had given full liberty to adore or not to 
adore, express's hints If as follows : ' lllud vero prai caeteris demiror qui adora- 
tionem illaua liberam relinquas, qui tamen Christum reipsa corporaliter, ut in 
ceelis, cum pane adesse, dari et sumi fatearis. Id enim si ita esse crederem, illius 
profecto non modo tolerabilem et religiosam, sed etiam necessariam arbitrager 
adorationem.' * 

Another Calvinist refutes the Lutheran doctrine in like manner : 'Hanc ado- 
rationem pontiliciani si neges, posita corporali prsesentia Christi in pane, crimen 
impietatis et contumeliae Christi nee apud papistas, nee apud ullos sanos potes 
etl'ugere.' | 

The Calvinistic author of the Caution on the Boole of Concord : $ ' Si Christus 
in pane euchai istico prsesena esset corporaliter, necessario nos ad panem hunc 
converses oporteret ipsi reverentiam et adorationem Deo debitam exhibere. Al- 
ligata est autem adoratio ad hanc naturam humanam, assumptam a Filio Dei, ut 
ubicumque vel sensu uostro, vel verbo ipsius constat eum esse prajsentem, eo 
ciirio-i adorationem et honorem Christi, amnio et corpore necesse sit : sicut dictum 
est : AdSh nt < van tmnes AngtM Dei. || Estque fabula impia et in Christum con- 
tumeliosG quod aliqui (Lutherani) respondent Christum adesse huic paui, non ut 
in eoadoretui'.sedutineoeomedatur, nequejussiss :ibi seadorari, sadedi. Sntlicit 
cnim universale Dei mandatum de adorando Christo, ad asserendura ei summnm 
honorem. Si igitur constaret eum ibi praesentem essesuo corpore, tain non esset 
nobis expectandum special .■ mandatum, de reverent ia et honore divino ipsi in hoc 
pane exhfhendo, quam non expectabat, nee expectare debebat Thomas siognlare 
mandatum de adorando Christo, quern videbat ob oculos suos stantem in conclavi, 

• Ut ■ Carta Domini, p. 270. t Balasus in Examen recit. p. *20. % Cli. ii. p. 368. 
| Ileb. i. 6. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 19*7 

The Real Presence. 
We have already remarked the address of your lords spiritual 
of 1562 in not only rejecting the real presence, which still had 
its partisans in this Convocation, and which was afterwards ad- 
mitted and defended by many doctors of your Church : perhaps 
I may have occasion farther on to make you acquainted with 
them. It is nevertheless true, that the Zuinglian and Calvinis- 
tic opinions, at last prevail with you to such a degree, that, upon 
discoursing on this subject in your country, I have often been 
astonished at persons, otherwise well instructed, when I advanced 
that the doctrine of the real presence had found most able de- 
fenders in the Church of England : I have even been obliged 
for my justification to produce writings and passages that I had 
at first cited from memory. Permit me now to ask you, what 
great discoveries your modern theologians have made in the holy 
scriptures, to induce them to reject a doctrine as ancient in your 
country as its conversion to Christianity : to reject the natural 
sense which is presented to every unprejudiced mind by the 
words repeated by the three evangelists and by St. Paul, this is 
my body, and according to the Syriac version of St. Mark, this 
is my very body: 1 to reject the only sense which agrees with the 
discourse of the promise, which most certainly speaks only of the 

scd eo agnito, statim sui memor officii, proeidens coram eo exclaniavit: Dominus 
metis el Deus mem. In regfa aut prineipis conspectuin nemo sanus prodit, quin 
ad ilium cenverso vultu reverentiam ipsi debitam cxhiboat. Quae igitur fuerit im- 
pietas, si Christus tam proprio nobis assistat corporaliter, ut per manus sacer- 
dotam in ora nostra cum pane se deferri patiatur, non toto animo et corpore ad 
panem ilium converso, divinos honores Christo prasstare? Nee obstat quod ibi 
non ccrnatur oeulis. Si cnim vn-bi ipsius tcstimonio constaret, cum adesso ibi 
suo corpore, hoc magis ad credendum et ibi adorandum ipsum nos obligaret, quam 
testimonium sensus nostri. 

Btbh Oheronithm himself, the disciple of Melanchton, found himself obliged to 
acknowledge that the corporal presence induced the necessity of adoration. 
• Nulliis i-t qui dnbitet an ('hri.-ti corpus in ccena sit adorandum, nisi qui cum 
S.M rami-ntariis aut negat aut dubitat in coma vere Christum esse prsesentem.'* 

'Amongst the most judicious critics, some are of opinion that St. Mark him- 
self was the author of this Syriac rersioDj and thai he made it for the use of the 
converted Jews, to whom this language was then natural. Others, among whom 
is found Walton, the learned bishop of Chester, attribute it to some disciples of 
♦Exainen cone. Trident, sess. 31. cap. V. 
17* 



198 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

reality, and to substitute in its place one of figure, of representa- 
tion and of absence, which contradicts the promised nianducation 
Of this flesh, which is truly meat, and which was to be given for 
the life of the world 2 But in place of discoveries, for no new 
discovery could be made in writings so well understood and so 
thoroughly examined before them, they formed their decision 
upon the same grounds, which the reformers had already pro- 
duced to give credit to their new interpretation. 

These examples and these grounds or reasons shall all be dis- 
cussed in their turns : and in order that you may judge more 
correctly of the former, we will here produce some principles 
admitted by all parties. According to the rules of language 
there are some things established by use, as signs : there are 
others on the contrary which are not, and which cannot become 
si^ns except by a new and primary establishment of them as 
such. When signs are established by use, we have a right to 
suppose that they are known as such by those to whom we speak, 
and if we discover any perplexity in their mind, it arises from 
their being unable to ascertain, not what they are in themselves 
but what they signify : then, by giving to these signs the names 
of the things signified, the perplexity ceases, and the meaning 
of the phrase is clearly understood by every one. Thus, when 
you shew me a collection of pictures, you say : Do you see this 
portrait '? It is the Prince Regent : or it is the Princess Boyal. 
When you direct my observation to geographical maps, you say 
to me ; This is England ; This is Scotland : I perfectly under- 
stand you, because I know that pictures and maps are established 
si"-ns : and my only difficulty was to know what they particularly 
represented. This is not the case with signs that are newly 
established for the first time. Not being accustomed to regard 

the apostles. According to the spirit of the original it should be translated : Thin 
i . my body, my own body, which is given for yon. Thk in my blood, my own blood.* 
Fur it is also for this reason that the Syriac, which is as ancient as the Greek, 
and which was done in the time of the apostles, reads. This is my own body ; and 
thai in the liturgy of the Greeks it is declared that what is given to us is the very 
(,,, ly of Jesus Christ and his very blood. Bossuet, Medit. sur VEvangtte, 22 jour. 

* Proleg. Bibl. Polyglot. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 199 

the thing you have named to me as a sign, and having been 
taught to consider it merely according to its natural and essential 
properties, I cannot understand that which you wish to establish 
by it, unless you acquaint me with the particular use to which 
it is destined by you. If you would have me to understand you, 
you must explain yourself, or let me know that, contrary to the 
established usage, you have taken it into your head to make a 
sign of what has hitherto been no such thing. In fact, to return 
to the portraits and maps we were speaking of, put in my place 
some uninstructed savage, and in vain would you repeat to him : 
This is the Kegent; This is England : he will understand nothing 
about it, because, in regard to him, these maps and paintings 
are signs then for the first time established, which you must ex- 
plain to him before you make use of them. 

The principle naturally applies itself to the point in question. 
It is plain that before the institution of the Eucharist, it had 
never been the custom to consider bread as a sign of any thing 
whatsoever, that it had not been classed among those objects that 
are ordinarily considered as signs, but in the number of those 
which are regarded as peculiar and distinct things. Jesus Christ 
could not employ it to signify his body, unless he then, for the 
first time, established bread as a sign ; and in that case, to make 
himself understood, to speak according to the rules of language 
and good sense, he must have explained his intention to the 
apostles, who could not have the least suspicion of it; but this 
he in no wise did : or at least he must have previously intimated 
to them that he should on some future occasion make use of bread 
to give them a sign of his body ; and we do not find that he ever 
announced any such thing, but rather quite the contrary. It is 
certain, therefore, that he could not have intended to establish 
bread as the mere figure of his body, by these most positive terms, 
l/, is is my body, without a previous admonition or an actual ex- 
planation, because it would have been the first establishment of 
tnia Blgn, and we only then give to signs the names of the things 
signified, when they have already been regarded as signs, lie, 
who was true man, spoke according to the language of othei 



200 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

men : He, who Was wisdom itself, could no otherwise express 
himself but in a wise and rational manner; He, who is truth it- 
self, could never express himself in a manner that was deceitful 
and calculated to lead into error his disciples, to whom he had 
said : ' The time comes when I will no longer speak to you in 
parables, but openly :' to whom he then wished to give bis last 
moat important instructions : to whom in fine he bequeathed a 
share in the testament which he instituted for them, on the eve 
of his separation from them by death. 

And if in the course of his ministry Jesus Christ, making use 
of common metaphors, said to his apostles, lam the door, lam 
a vine; the minds of men were sufficiently prepared for this, 
and could have found no difficulty but in discovering the imme- 
diate purpose, for which he had employed these figurative ex- 
pressions. It is surprising that any one should have pretended 
to discover in these expressions any resemblance with the words 
of the institution, and conclude from these two metaphors that 
this is my body might be explained by this is the sign of my 
body. For 1, It would be necessary at least to suppose that our 
Saviour, when he said I am a door, I am a vine, meant to say 
that he was the sign or the figure of a door or of a vine, which 
is perfectly absurd. When he calls himself a door or a vine, it 
is not that he is the sign or figure of them, but that he possesses 
qualities of which a door and a vine presented feeble but sensible 
images. There is then no parity between these examples : they 
are of two very different kinds. 

2. Jesus Christ himself explains what he meant to convey 
under each of these figures. ' I am the door. By me if a man 
enter in, he shall be saved : and he shall go in, and go out, and 
shall find pastures.' 1 And in like manner : ' I am the true 
vine ; and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me 
that beareth not fruit, he will take away : and every one that 
beareth fruit, he will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the 
vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. 2 
1 St. John, x. 9. - St. John, xv. 1, '-', 3. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 201 

3. But if men will draw comparisons from these and other 
such examples, they must do it in a different way : and, instead 
of saying, Jesus Christ is the door or the vine, God the Father 
is the vine-dresser, which presents reasonable and very intelligi- 
ble metaphors on account of the explanation that accompanies 
them, they must change the sentences as follows: This door 
or this line is Jesus Christ, this vine dresser is God the Father, 
Then they would have a grammatical resemblance with this is 
my body : but then also, taken in their isolated state and without 
previous preparations or explanations, as the words this is my 
body are taken, they would be so ridiculous and extravagant that 
no sensible person would ever advance such propositions. 

How often have the ministers brought forward the words of 
the parable related in St. Matthew, 1 the seed is the word of God, 
and the field is the world! And because it would admit of none 
but a figurative sense, they would infer that the words of this 
eucharistic institution must also be susceptible of it. And they 
see not the erroneous difference between them ! We must there- 
fore place it before their eyes. Who does not know that a para- 
ble is a sort of enigma, in which words are employed to convey 
a meaning different from that which they seem to present, and 
in which every person seeks for the meaning concealed under the 
expressions, because he is well aware that there must be one 
there, even before he has discovered it? The apostles having 
in vain endeavored to penetrate into it, besought our Saviour to 
inform tbem : ' Explain to us, said they, the parable of the 
cockle of the field.' Jesus seeing that all their anxiety was to 
know (ho signification of this parable, answered them very natu- 
rally : 'He that soweth the good seed, is the son of man, and 
the field is the world. And the good seed are the children of 
the kingdom, and the cockle are the children of the wicked one, 
and the enemy thai Bowed them is the devil. But tin; harvest is 
the <-nd of the world, and the reapers ire the angels.' Jesus 
answered according to the wishes of the apostles : They had 
asked bim merely to know tin- meaning concealed under the terms 

i Ch. xiii. 



202 ON TUB CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

which they knew to be but signs, but the signification of which 
they could not discover. They perfectly understood it, as soon as 
Jesus Christ had joined to the signs the name of the things 
signified. 

But suppress the parable : imagine Jesus Christ in the open _ 
fields with his "disciples, and shewing them the reapers at their 
work. In this case, it is evident that he could not have said to 
them, these are angels, merely to signify that they represented 
angels. Upon this M. Nicole argues as follows : To say in the 
explanation of a parable that reapers are angels, is speaking rea- 
sonably : but to say out of a parable and when reapers are not 
considered as signs, but as men, that they are angels, in order 
to indicate that they represent angels, is a proposition most ab- 
surd and contrary to common sense. Now the proposition this 
is my body, taken in the calvinistic sense, is not like the propo- 
sition, these reapers are angels considered in a parable, but out 
of a parable. Then it is not like it, except when it must be 
considered absurd and contrary to common sense. 

There is quite as litte solidity and analogy in the example of 
the paschal lamb, become so celebrated by the manner in which 
Zuinglius affirms that it was revealed to him in a dream, after 
he had wasted full five years in vainly opposing the real presence. 
He could not say for certain, whether the spirit which had ac- 
quainted him with this example was black or white. Black in 
my opinion, and most decidedly so : for the absurdity of his 
revelation could proceed from nothing else than a spirit of dark- 
ness. I expect you will soon be of my opinion on this point. 
You will see that the example adduced by the nocturnal phantom 
neither requires nor forms any figure : and that, should we even 
make a concession of this, no inference could thence be drawn 
against the natural and simple sense of the words, this is my 
body. 

1. The example is drawn from a chapter of Exodus, where, 
after having regulated the manner in which the paschal lamb 
was to be chosen and immolated, and in which the houses were 
to be sprinkled with its blood, the Lord adds : ' And thus you 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 203 

shall eat it : you shall gird your reins, and you shall have shoes 
on your feet, holding staves in your hands, and you shall eat in 
baste : for it is the Phase (that is the passage) of the Lord. 
And I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and will 
kill every first born - ' 1 There is nothing said here to make the 
lamb the sign of the passover : every thing points to the time 
when the Lord was to pass. Be ready to go out of Egypt, and 
equipped for your journey : make haste to eat the paschal lamb, 
and lose no time, for the Lord is going to pass. Such is the 
sense that these words naturally present : for it is the Phase 
(thai is the Passage') of the Lord. What immediately follows 
confirms this : ' and I will pass through the land of Egypt that 
night,' adds the Lord. It was then the moment of his approach- 
ing and immediate passage that was indicated by the word, for 
it is the passage of the Lord, which also is given to the Israelites 
as a motive and a reason for the command given to them that 
they must keep themselves in readiness to depart and eat in haste. 
And in fact, the passage of the Lord was to be their signal for 
departure. Moreover, when Moses speaks of the lamb, he calls 
it neither passage nor sign of the passage, but the victim of the 
passage. It is to celebrate this event that the lamb is to be im- 
molated : it is to perpetuate the" remembrance of this famous 
epoch of their deliverance, that they are commanded to sacrifice 
the paschal lamb every year, and to reply to their children when 
they should ask them the meaning of this sacrifice : ' It is the 
victim of the passage of the Lord, when he passed over the houses 
of the children of Israel in Egypt, striking the Egyptians and 
saving our houses.' After this explanation given us by the sa- 
cred text in the Bame chapter, on what ground would the minis- 

t •!•- oblige as to n ive a different explanation, and compel us 

t<» belieye upon their interpretation, that the lamb is the sign of 
the passage, when the Holy Spirit assures us that it is the victim 
of the passage? The words objected to us do not refer to the 
lamb, but to the preparations commanded lor their journey an I 
to the quicfc despatch of their repast. They wore all to be equi^- 

1 Exodus, xii. 2. 



20 1 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

pod for their journey, and cat in haste : and why? because the 
Lord is going to pass. In all this there is no occasion for sign 
or figure : every thing is taken literally and is wonderfully clear. 
There can be conceived no subject for Zuinglius's extravagant 
triumph in this discovery : it would appear that his black spirit 
turned his brain, and cast him into a perpetual delirium and ab- 
surdity. 

2. And should we even be so indidgent to Zuinglius and his 
phantom, and also his numerous followers, as to grant that the 
text in question refers to the lamb, and that we must in conse- 
quence explain these words, it is the passage of the Lord, by, 
it is the sign of the passage of the Lord, what could they thence 
infer ? Let them keep in mind the general principle, that the 
name of the thing signified may be given to the sign, when we 
see in the minds of others that they regard it as a sign, and are 
only at a loss to understand what it signifies : but that it is never 
lawful to do so, when there is no reason to suppose this disposi- 
tion in those to whom we speak. This is the principle : now for 
the application. God commands them to take a lamb without 
blemish, a male, and one year old, to keep it four days, to immo- 
late it at the end of the fourth day, to sprinkle with its blood the 
outsides of the doors, to eat it roasted, to consume it entirely 
without reserving any thing for the next day, to eat it with bitter 
herbs, in the dress of travelers, with their reins girt, their shoes 
on their feet, and staves in their hands. What is the meaning 
of this display of strange ceremonies, this detail of extraordinary 
circumstances ? What mean all these preparations ? and why is 
this lamb commanded to be eaten in so mysterious a manner ? 
There was no Israelite but must have put similar questions, and 
must have found the reply in these words : it is the passage of 
the Lord. If these words were by them applied to the lamb, 
they must then have understood without difficulty that the lamb 
was the sign of this passage, because so great a number of strange 
and most unusual ceremonies had prepared them to regard it as 
a mysterious and significative object. But the bread had not 
been regarded as a sign, as an emblematical and mysterious ob- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 205 

ject : no anterior circumstance, no actual explication, no word of 
our Saviour tended to make the bread, which he held in his hand, 
be considered, as the matter of which he was going to make a 
sign. The apostles had clearly understood their master to speak 
of a particular bread upon some solemn occasion, and no doubt 
had taken care not to lose the remembrance of it : but this bread 
which he had promised them, had not been announced either as 
a sign, or as a figure : it was to be fledi, and flesh that would be 
meat indeed, flesh that must be eaten to obtain eternal life ; in 
fine, that very flesh which would be also delivered up for the life 
of the world. It is not likely that with such ideas, and such 
instructions imprinted on their minds, the apostles, upon hearing 
these positive words solemnly articulated, this is my body, should 
have imagined that they signified, this is the sign of my body. 
In truth, it is offering too great an insult to the word and to one's 
self to advance such chimeras as these, and to give them admit- 
tance into one's mind : and it is being too blind or too obstinate, 
not to see and not to acknowledge the essential difference that 
exists between the examples that they would fain compare to- 
gether, and not to be feelingly convinced that what renders the 
figure admissible in that of Exodus, renders it, in that of the 
Gospel, unadmissible and unreasonable. 

Let us pass from the examples to the arguments that our ad- 
versaries draw from scripture for the support of their opinion. 
The most specious, the only one in fact that deserves to be seri- 
ously examined, is that which seems to be favored by the words, 
that immediately follow the words of institutiou. We learn from 
St. Luke, that our Saviour after having said : Take and eat, this 
is my body, add e 1 ; Do this for a commemoration of me. They 
will have these hist words to be an explanation of those that pre- 
cede : and because, according to our adversaries, the remembrance 
can only be of tilings absent, we cannot suppose Jesus Christ to 
be present in the Eucharist, because, if he were really there, he 
would not have ordained it as a memorial and in remembrance 
of his person. You, Sir, as well as myself, must have heard this 
argument a thousand times ; it is in all the books of your reformed 
18 



206 on the cumcii of England 

theologian?, and in the mouth of the most ordinary laics. What- 
ever color and whatever likelihood it may appear to horrow from 
scripture, you will soon, I trust, judge of it in a different manner, 
when y<>u have read the following reasons. 

1. It is a fact that none of the fathers, none of the ecclesias- 
tical writers have ever seen in these words the sense which the 
Calvinists have discovered in them. It is a fact again that none 
of those who first broached the doctrine of the figurative presence 
were led to do so by these words, Do this for a commemoration 
of me. Zuinglius, who must have had them a hundred times 
under his eyes, and who went every where in search of the figure, 
was unable to discover it there. He was taught to discover this 
precious pearl, as he himself calls it, only from the letter of a 
Dutchman, and to defend it in a way that seemed to him victori- 
ous, only by the revelation of a nocturnal phantom. But this 
figurative sense being once discovered and established, they 
thought it advisable, in order to give it consistency, to invent 
a necessary relation between the words of the institution and 
those immediately following, regard these latter as the explication 
of the former, and, by favor of an induction from one to the 
other, to find the so much desired figure even in the words of 
Jesus Christ. But what will for ever demonstrate that this com- 
bination of connexion and dependance between these words de- 
rives its origin from prepossession, and not from the text, is the 
fact of its remaining so long a time unknown in the world. In- 
deed it not only escaped the observation of all the Christians 
during a long succession of ages, but even of the innovators 
themselves, who had the greatest interest in discovering it : they 
themselves only adopted it, as an after thought ; and it is not by 
this pretended necessary relation that they arrived at the figure, 
but from the figurative sense they passed to this new and arbitrary 
supposition. 

2. If the words, do this for a commemoration of me, are 
necessarily explanatory of the preceding ones, this is my body, 
and if from the reality they lead us to the figure, we must say 
that our Saviour wished to imitate the wanton jokes of certain 



AXD THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 207 

persons who begin by announcing something very extraordinary, 
and conclude by giving it a most simple and natural turn. This 
way of acting may not be misplaced in company ; it may, in our 
conversations, have its point and agreeableness, by the surprise 
which it occasions at first, and by the pleasure that it afterwards 
produces by an unexpected explanation, which draws the minds 
of our hearers from a perplexity that till then had held them in 
suspense. But to impute to our Saviour any thing of this kind 
approaches to blasphemy. This kind of conversation is totally 
opposite to the Gospel in general, and above all to that imposing 
gravity which should characterize the last supper, so near his 
passiob, and so filled with thoughts of death : in fine it is totally 
inconsistent with the well-known character of the God-man, of 
whom it is not written that he ever was heard to indulge in a 
joke, or that he was ever even seen to laugh. 

3. If the words this is my body convey in their insulated state 
and of themselves the sense of the reality, and if they are de- 
termined to that of the figure merely by the following words, do 
tin's fur a commemoration of me, it follows that these latter are, 
of absolute necessity, the explanation of the former, and that 
tiny must not be separated from one another, for if the latter 
were suppressed, we Bhould be necessarily obliged to admit the 
sense of the reality, which, in my present supposition, is that 
which Jesus Christ wished to exclude by adding: Do this for a 
commemoration of me. It is evident therefore that, in this hy- 
pothesis, it oannot be right, without contradicting the end and 
design of our Saviour, to relate the first words without the second. 
Ami yet St. Matthew and St. Mark; the two first evangelists, 
and for many years the only ones, passed over the second in 
silence. Tiny did not deem them necessary: they did not con- 
sider them us explanatory of tin' proceeding ones : and therefore 
they did not discover between them that connexion, that essential 
dependence, which your friends have sinee invented. 

4. To come to the bottom of their argument, I observe that 
it goes upon the prinoiple thai .-i memorial supposes an absence, 
and that consequently if -Jesus Christ were present in the Eucha- 



208 ON THE CHURCII OF ENGLAND 

rist, he would not command that they should there bear him in 
remembrance. Now this principle, specious as it may appear, 
I hesitate not to pronounce absolutely false. I know that re- 
membrance is generally applied to things absent : you will never- 
theless agree with me that it is not opposed to absence, but to 
forgetfuluess, and that it is very proper that we should be ad- 
monished to keep in mind what we might forget.. Now there 
are many things present that we are liable to forget, because 
their presence is not sensible to us, and does not strike our eyes. 
Do we not forget God and the guardian angels ? do we not for- 
get our souls, &c? The presence of these objects is most cer- 
tain, but not being sensible, we are but too apt to forget them, 
and we have sufficient reasons to recall them to our remembrance. 
AYell : the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is of this 
kind ; real but not sensible. He might therefore very justly say 
to us, remember me when you take my body : because being in- 
visible to our senses, his body is only present to our faith. 

5. As for the rest, Sir, I have gone into this detail for no 
other purpose than to convince you that there is no solidity in 
these so often refuted arguments, and that they can be supported 
on no side, the principle falling together with its consecpiences. 
You know however that the figurists of all countries place all 
their reliance upon it, and that this memorial ordained by our 
Saviour is the ground of their doctrine, the entrenchment where 
they think they are in safety. Now that you see the weakness 
of all its parts, would you wish to know the true and just signi- 
fication of these words, do this for a commemoration of me? it 
is not difficult to discover it : you must begin by ridding yourself 
of this essential connexion of which you have so often heard but 
with which neither St. Matthew, nor St. Mark nor any of the 
bishops or doctors of the Church were acquainted : and which 
was only taken up as an after- thought by those who renewed the 
doctrine of the figurative sense. These two passages, this is my 
body, do this for a commemoration of me, are independent of one 
another, and have each of them a separate, a peculiar and dis- 
tinct sense. The first gives the reality, the second supposes, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 209 

rather than destroj's it. The one is a proposition declaratory of 
what is presented — the body of Jesus Christ ; the other, a pre- 
cept as to the spirit and disposition in which we ought to receive 
it, that is, as we learn from St. Paul, by remembering that he 
was delivered up and that he suffered for us : ' For as often as 
you shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, you shall shew 
the death of the Lord.' 1 Jesus Christ was desirous that our 
thoughts and our hearts should be fixed upon his passion, at the 
time of our receiving his adorable body. Of all the benefits 
conferred upon us, that which he wishes us to reflect upon the 
in rat and to choose by preference, is his death, that is, the pledge 
of our redemption, the only hope of our salvation, the most 
heroic act of his love for us, as being the dart best calculated to 
inflame our souls at the moment of our approaching his sacred 
table. 

Thus, Sir, although a memorial need not suppose absence, it 
is nevertheless true to say that the object of our remembrance 
i.i this great act of religion is not present in the Eucharist: for 
this object, which the memorial is to bring to our mind, is the 
<! aih of our Saviour, merely represented to us by the separa- 
tion of his body under the appearance of bread, and of his blood 
undi -r that of wine. It might seem that the Eucharist being a 
memorial of bis death ought to be preceded by it. But no, it is 
for men, whose knowledge and foresight are uncertain, to per- 
mit things to happen, before they command others to keep them 
i;i remembrance.' 3 The command to shew forth the death of 
!•! ■ Lord, belonging to the very institution of the mystery, there 
is no doubt that at the first Lord's supper it was complied with 
1/y the apostles. They shew forth by the anticipation of one 
day that passion which all Christian ages, have since shewn forth 
Ky commemoration: and it is most evidenl thai a duty practised 
1), the apostles, in the presence of Jesue Christ living and speak- 
ing before them, can never become for us a proof of his absence. 

In general .'ill the objection \v have just seen, and those lesser 
biofa we have suppressed, that we may not stretch out the 

1 1. <',,;-. xv. 20. "Bossuut. 
18< 



210 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

dissertation into a volume, tend equally to convince us that the 
Eucharist presents not really the body, but merely the figure of 
the body. Observe that from all these objections it would result 
that Jesus Christ must be made to say precisely the contrary to 
what he did say : for if he has only left us the figure, it follows 
that what he said was his body is not so, and what he said was 
his blood is not so, since the sign is not the object itself, but 
only the representation of it. Therefore, instead of the positive 
words that came from his mouth this is my body, this is my blood, 
he must be made to say, at least equivalently, this is not my 
body, this is not my blood ; for it is only the figure of them. 

Moreover our Saviour knew that the apostles would not speak 
of figure either in their writings or in their discourses : that upon 
the faith of their word written and unwritten, the Christians 
would enter into the sense of the reality : he knew also that in 
the course of ages a time would come when a great number 
would rise up against this hitherto universal doctrine : he saw 
the actual separation that this produced or at least strengthened ; 
he heard the quarrels and disputes which so miserably divide us : 
he heard some bring forward reason and the senses against his 
words, maintain that the Eucharistic bread could be nothing but 
the figure of his body, others, establishing themselves upon these 
same words, maintain that it was his true and real body : and 
in spite of this foreknowledge, in spite of the different interpre- 
tations he hears given to his expressions, and of all the evils 
derived from them, he permits that all the sacred writers whom 
he inspires should always speak of his body and never of the 
figure of his body. Can any thing be so strange and incompre- 
hensible as this conduct of our Saviour ? Where could be his 
goodness, his justice, and his tenderness for his Church? and 
would he not 'have led us himself astray, if these words, flesh 
meat indeed, blood drink indeed, blond drink indeed, body, blood 
of Jesus Christ, which we read in his Testament, were only to 
express error, while the words sign and figure, which are read no 
where, were alone to open to us the true sense of the revelation? 
I remark another singularity quite as striking in your teachers 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 211 

One of the principles they are for ever bringing forward, and 
the one on which the reformation has been erected, is that we 
cannot be obliged to believe or practice any thing but what is 
contained in the scriptures or clearly deduced therefrom. We 
have just seen that there does not exist a single passage in the 
holy scriptures, which even authorizes the figure, far from de- 
monstrating it : it cannot therefore be deduced from it ; much 
less can it be read there: for the word figure is no where read 
with the Eucharist. St. John, in the discourse of the promise, 
always announces a real manducation, flesh to be eaten that was 
meat indeed, blood to be drunk that was drink indeed, the flesh 
which was to be delivered, the blood which was to be shed : the 
three evangelists relating the fulfillment of the promise, speak 
of the body that is delivered, of the blood that is shed. St. Paul 
repeats the same words, according to the immediate revelation he 
had received from our Saviour. The word figure is no where 
heard : but every thing re-echoes with the words, tody of Jesus 
< 'hrist, hi nod of Jesus Christ : it is Jesus Christ whom we receive, 
his body of which we participate : it is of his body and blood 
we render ourselves guilty by an unworthy participation. What 
therefore becomes now of the grand principle of your reformation? 
an 1 by what forgetfulness, or rather by what a contradiction do 
your reformers persist so obstinately in rejecting the body and 
the blood, of which the scripture is always speaking, to admit a 
,-i/n. a figure, which is no where to be found therein? 

Thanks to divine Providence, the doctrine of the reality has 
been preserved and always defended in the most considerable 
society of protestantism. Luther, which it acknowledges as its 
liend, and from whom it boasts to derive its name, never shewed 
to greater advantage the strength of mind and vehemence of lan- 
guage which he joined to a turbulent and impetuous temper, than 
in the defence of the literal sense against the new sacrainentarians. 
lie could not help paying a tribute of honor to himself on this 
score, with a modesty of which you shall be the judge: 'Tte 
papists themselves are obliged to give me the praise of having 
defended better than they the doetrinc of the literal sense. And 



212 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

I am certain were they all melted up together, they would not 
be able to support it as forcibly as I do." Luther was mistaken, 
as we shall see in the following article: it is certain, however, 
tliat he remained constantly attached to the literal sense, and 
that the Bacramentarians, unable to soften the inflexibility of his 
principles, have often been constrained to come nearer to them 
and to affect his language in the agreements they attempted to 
make with him at Wittemberg and at Sinalkald. 2 

But I will now present you with a confession of faith that shall 
exceedingly surprise you : you are about to hear the Calvinists 
express themselves as forcibly as the Lutherans and the Catholics 
on the real presence : and one might take them to be zealous de- 
fenders of it, if we knew nothing of their variations. Beza and 
Farel, 3 were charged by the reformed Churches of France to 
carry it to Worms, where the states of the confession of Augs- 
burgh were assembled. It is there said, ' that in the Lord's 

1 Ap. Hosp. epist. Luth. ad. an 1534. 
2 These, agreements, in which sincerity had less to do than policy, could not be 
of long duration, and Luther again commenced with increased fury his old abusive 
attacks upon them. He treated them in his Short Confession of Faith 'as tools, 
blasphemers, a worthless tribe, damned wretches, for whom it was not lawful to 
p. ay.' He there protested that < he would have no communication with them 
either by letter, by words, or by works, if they did not acknowledge that the 
Eucharistic bread was the true natural body of our Lord. ... It is as indifferent 
to me (said he again,) whether I am praised or blamed by the the frantic Zuing- 
liana or other such people, as it is to be praised or blamed by the Turk, the Pope, 
or by all the devils : for being near unto death, I am desirous of carrying this 
glory and this testimony to the tribunal of Jesus Christ, that I have with my 
whole heart condemned Carlostadius, Zuinglius, CEcolampadius, and other fa- 
natical enemies of the sacrament, together with all their disciples who are at 
Zuich: and every day in our discourses do we condemn their heresy full of 
bla-ph 'inies and impostures.' Hpon this the Swiss warmly retorted. They issued 
o it against him a manifesto, in which they told him in plain terms, ' that he was 
nothing but an old fool : that men must !>,■ as mad as himself to endure his angry 
effusions; that he dishonored his old age: that he rendered himself contemptible 
by his violent conduct: and that he might to be ashamed to till his books with so 
much abusive language and so many devils.' Indeed Luther had taken care tc 
put the devil within and without, ah >ve and below, before and behind the Zuing- 
lians, by inventing new phrases to penetrate them with demons, and repeating 
this odious word till men were tilled with horror, as Bossuet observes on this 
passage. 

3 Hospine. ad. an. 1557. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 213 

Supper are received not only the benefits of Jesus Christ, but 
his substance even and his own flesh: that the body of the Son 
of God is not proposed to use in it in figure only and by signifi- 
es fion symbolically as a memorial of Jesus Christ absent, but 
that he is truly and really made present with the symbols, which 
are not simple signs. And if we add (said they), that the man- 
ner in which this body is given to us is symbolical and sacra- 
mental, it is not that it is merely figurative, but because, under 
the species of visible things, God offers us, gives us, and makes 
present for us, together with the symbols, that which is there 
signified to us. This we say, in order that it may appear that 
w • retain in the Lord's Supper the presence of the true body and 
blood of Jesus Christ, and that if there remain any dispute, it 
will no longer refer to any thing but the manner.' Let people 
hold to this declaration, and disputes would easily be terminated. 
But why should I thus accumulate foreign authorities, while I 
can shew the same doctrines to have been supported in your 
country, by the most distinguished members of your Church, 
particularly in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, I. ? 
' You and I,' ' said Bishop Ridley, in the reign of Edward VI. 
to the Catholics, ' agree in this, that in the sacrament is the very 
true ami natural body and blood of Jesus Christ, even that which 
was born of the Virgin Mary, which ascended into heaven, which 
sits on the right hand of God the Father, &c, we only differ in 
the way and manner of being there.' 

Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, says that they, who in 
his time, held different opinions respecting the sacrament, were 
still found to accord in one; for ' They grant (says he), that 
these holy mysteries received in due manner, do instruinentally 
both make us partakers of the grace of that body and blood, 
which were given for the life of the world; and besides also 
impart unto us, even in a true and nal, though mystical manner, 
(In; very person of our Lord himself, whole perfect, and entire.' 3 

•Ridley's Conftes ion, aa related in the acta and Monuments of John Fox, p. 
169, ic. 'Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. Book v. sec. (>7. p. 3G0. London 



214 ON THE ClIURCH OF ENGLAND 

' We believe, no less than you, in a true presence,' said James 
I and Bishop Andrews. 1 

The same was said by Casaubon in his letter written bj order 
of the King to the Cardinal du Peron. 

We will now hear Bishop Montague on this subject. The con- 
tents of Chapter XXX. of his appeal are as follows. < A real 
presence maintained by us. The difference betwixt us, and the 
Popish writers is only about the Modus, the manner of Christ's 
presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Agreement likely to be made, 
but for the factions and unquiet spirits on both sides. Beat! 
Pacific!.' In the body of the chapter is the following passage. 
' Concerning this point I said, and say so still, that if men were 
disposed, as they ought, unto peace, there need be no difference. 
And I added a reason, which I repeat again here : the disagree- 
ment is only in De modo proescntk? (the manner of the presence). 
The thing is yielded to on either side, that there is in the holy 
Eucharist a real presence. 2 

Another of your Bishops exclaims : 3 < God forbid, we should 
deny, that the flesh and blood of Christ, are truly present and 
truly received of the faithful at the Lord's table. It is the doc- 
trine that we teach others, and comfort ourselves withal.' 4 

In the explication of this question and the manner of the real 
presence it is much insisted upon, that it be inquired, whether 
when we say that we believe Christ's body to be reaUy in the 
Sacrament, we mean that body, that flesh that icas born of the 
Virgin Mary, that was crucified, dead and buried. I answer 
that I know none else that he had or hath : there is but one body 
of Christ natural and glorified : but he that says that body is 
glorified which was crucified says it is the same body, but not 
after the same manner : and so it is in the Sacrament ; we eat 
and drink the body and blood of Christ that was broken and 
poured forth : for there is no other body, no other blood of Christ : 
but though it is the same we eat and drink yet it is in another 

Th; r ,7 • "' V t' , BW,op Bilson - 4 Bishop Ta - vW on the real P>~ 
in h.s Collection of Polermcal Discourses New and Old.' p. 185, 186. Third 
edit. London, 1674. *""-u 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 215 

manner They that do not confess the Eucharist to be the 

flesh of our Saviour, which flesh suffered for us, let them be an- 
athema: for sure it is, as sure as Christ is true.' ' 

' The doctrine of those Protestants seems most safe, and true, 
who are of opinion, nay most firmly believe, the body and blood 
of Christ to be truly and really, and substantially present in the 
Eucharist and to be received by the faithful ; but that the manner 
of his being there, is incomprehensible in respect to human rea- 
son and ineffable ; is known to God, and not revealed in the 
Scriptures.' 

' Of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the 
Eucharist none of the Protestant Churches entertain a doubt.' 3 
In pages 10 and 11 he cites the passage adduced above of An- 
drews, Bishop of Winchester, and also asserts that Bishop Poinet 
one of his successors clearly shews in his Dialecticon, that the 
Eucharist is not merely the figure of our Lord's body, but also 
contains its true and real nature and substance, he then quotes these 
words of Antonius de Dominis; ' I have no doubt that all, who 
believe the gospel will acknowledge that in the holy communion 
we receive the true, real and substantial nature of Christ. 4 
Cosin adduces also the testimony of the Saxon confession and of the 
Synod of Sandomir, and even that of Bucer, who said that 'the 
true body and true blood of Christ are exhibited and received 
together with the visible signs of bread and wine.' 

Read also again the little CatechiBm that your Church requires 
to be [earned by those whom she is preparing for confirmation : 
when asked ; ' What is the inward part or thing signified?' it is 
replied: 'The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and 
indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.' 
Not to mention the learned Jeremy Collier, who lost his situ- 
fion for refusing to take the test oath and who published his rea- 
son for his refusal: nor Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, who 
would have procured the abrogation of the test, act if the people 

1 lb. p. 258. "I'.„Im. DeEueharutia, I,. I. <•. I. qeo. 7. s.Cosin. Bitt. Tram. 
cap. II. par. I. p. 6. I don, Mi?:.. * Antom. de Dom. De Rep. Eccles, L F. No. 



216 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of his time could have understood and tasted the truth, that he 
developed with as much strength as erudition : the two hishops 
whose learning and reputation procured for them the honor of 
being consulted by the Duchess of York before her conversion, 
gave her clearly enough to understand that they themselves re- 
cognised the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. 1 In 
fine, Sir, after all the proofs I have just laid before you in this 
letter, what ought to surprise you is, not the reckoning amongst 
your able theologians zealous defenders of the real presence, but 
the finding that there are afterwards to be discovered so many 
others who have rejected and combated a mystery, so positively 
and so certainly revealed in the scriptures, and against which 
there cannot be reasonably brought a single passage of the sa- 
cred books. You are now in a condition to judge of it by our 
answers to their difficulties, and the proofs that will be eternally 
established in favor of the real presence, both by the words of 
the promise and of the institution. 

Transubstantiation. 

We have shown, against the reformed Zuinglians, Calvinists 
or Anglicans, that a figurative sense cannot be given to the words, 
this is my body. We are now going to shew against the Lu- 
therans, that the literal sense that must there be admitted, and 
which they admit with us, necessarily conducts to the dogmas of 
transubstantiation. This word, which is not in scripture, but 
which the Church has adopted to give its doctrine with more pre- 
cision, expresses the change of the substance of bread into the 
substance of the body of Jesus Christ. Now the literal sense 
most necessarily supposes this change. In fact, what our Sa- 
viour blesses and distributes to his apostles, he assures them, 
when giving it to them, that it is his body. Before, it was visi- 
bly bread and nothing else : actually, after his assertion, it is his 
body. A change therefore, has taken place ; for no substance 
whatever can at one and the same time remain what it is, and 

1 See the Declaration of the Duchess of York. 



AND TUB REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 217 

become another, because then it would bo and would not be it- 
self at the same time : it would be itself, having remained what 
it was: it would not be itself, having become something else, 
which is evidently absurd. 

"Will it be said, with Luther, that the bread having undergone 
no change, the body is come to be joined, or united to it? In 
thai Case, the words of our Saviour are changed; and his propo- 
sition amounts to one or other of these two, this is at once bread 
ami my body, or this bread is also my body. The literal sense 
of the words is manifestly abandoned by explaining them in this 
manner, or rather the words are not explained at all, but others 
are substituted in their place. Who in fact does not see that, 
this is my body, and this bread is also my body, are two different 
prepositions? Moreover this latter is in every respect opposed 
to the grammatical expression of the phrase. Our Saviour did 
noi Bay, this bread, but this, employing and indefinite term, a 
demonstrative neater pronoun, which interpreters render by hoc. 
Now the neuter pronoun cannot refer to bread, which is of another 
gender; it must then refer to the body, or be taken in general 
to denote, indistinctly the object that our Saviour was holding in 
his hand : and then the literal sense is, this, that is to say what 
T hold in my hand, is my body, but in no wise this bread is my 
body. The rules of grammcr could not permit it neither does 
good sense admit of it: for bread, remaining such cannot be the 
body : it is one or the other, but not both one and the other at 
once : there is therefore necessarily a change of the bread into 
the body, that these words, this is my body may be found true 
to the Letter. Again, the words of institution are explicit on the 
subject : • I L*e took bread says St. Paul, 1 and giving thanks broke 
and said : ' Take yt and eat, this is my body, which shall be de- 
livered for you ? and St. Matthew:' 'Drink yc all of this, for 
this is n, y blood of the New Testament which shall be shed for 
you." Jesus Christ gives to his apostles the body which icas 

i I. Corinth, xi. 21. -' xxvi. 26, 27. 
■ irdj m.I'Ii-i- ■■■>] exclusively to tin- apostles and their successors, could 
ibliah fin -all tin' faithful the divine precept of communion under both 
19 



218 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

going to he delivered, tlio blood, ichich was going to he shed: and 
most certainly there was no mixture of bread iu the body that 
was going to be delivered. 

The Calvinists have perceived this as well as ourselves. They 
have felt the necessity of a change in the bread : but this change, 
according to them, is not real; it is only moral. For them, 
from ordinary aliment, the bread becomes the figure of the body, 
and the words signify, this is the figure of my hody. This opinion 
is absolutely inadmissible as we have proved in the first part, 
and the Lutherans join with us in shewing them that they must 
absolutely adhere to the literal sense. In their turn the Calvi- 
nists here unite with us against the Lutherans, and demonstrate 
to them that their defending the literal sense must lead them to 
transubstantiation, and to acknowledge that dogma of the Catholic 
Church. As they borrow from her the arguments they employ 
against the Lutherans on this question I will press them into my 
service for the purpose of laying those arguments before you. 
Our proofs may perhaps appear stronger to you when coming 
from their mouths. At least, by bringing them on the stage one 
after another, you will find it more singular and striking to hear 
the Calvinists prove to the Lutherans the Catholic dogma. 

Let us produce first the great enemy of the real presence. 
Zuinglius speaks out plain upon this point in his reply to Billi- 
canus : ' Certainly (says he) 1 if we take the word is in its literal 
signification, those who follow the Pope are right, and we must 
believe that the bread is flesh.' That is to say, according to 
Zuinglus, the simple and literal sense of these words, this is my 
hody, necessarily includes transubstantiation. He has recourse 
to the same argument in his treatise on the Lord's Supper. 2 If 
kinds. It might be collected more speciously from the vi. chapter of St. John. 
But \, when we have proved that Jesus Christ is entirely under each kind, we 
receive him entirely under that of bread : and then it is true to say : ' Unless von 
eat my flesh and drink my blood you shall not have life eternal in you;' for in 
eating tho body, we drink also the blood. 2. Jesus Christ seems to inform us of 
this in this very discourse. He says, verse 52, 'If any man cat of this bread, he 
shall live for ever,' and verse 59, 'he that eateth this bread shall live for ever,' 
where we see the promise of eternal life attached to the manducation of bread 
alone, that is of the body. 

■Fol. 261. * Fot. 276. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 219 

wo explain without figure the word is; in the ' sentence this is 
ma body, it is impossible that the substance of bread should not 
be changed into the substance of the body of Jesus Christ, and 
that, thus what before was bread is no longer bread. Fieri ne- 
quit quin panis substantia in sipam carnis substantiam convertatur. 
Panis ergo amplius non est, qui antea panis erat.' He expresses 
himself moreover in the same manner, in a work against Luther: 
' If the word this marks the bread, and no figure can be toler- 
ated in these words, it follows that the bread becomes the body 
of Jesus Christ, and that what was bread, on a sudden is made 
the body of Jesus Christ. Jam panis transit in corpus Christi, 
et est corpus subito, quod jam panis erat.' 1 He had said to him 
a little before : ' If you obstinately persist in not receiving the 
figure, it follows that the Pope is right in saying that the bread 
is changed into the body of Jesus Christ.' 

Beza maintains against the Lutherans in the conference of 
Monbelliard, that of the two explications which confine them- 
selves to the literal sense ' that of the Catholics departs less from 
the words of institution, if they are to be expounded word for 
word.' 2 And he proves it thus: 'the advocates for transub- 
stantiation say, that, by virtue of these divine words, what be- 
i'..;v was bread, having changed its substance, becomes instantly 
the very body of Jesus Christ, in order that the proposition this 
is ,,ni body may thus be correct: whereas the exposition of the 
for consubstantiation saying that the words this is my 
body, signify my body is essentially, within, with, or under this 
bread, docs not declare what the bread has become, nor what it 
is that is the body, but merely where the body is.' This proof 
i- striking and decisive. For Jesus Christ, when he says this is 
'■'.'/ body, declares that such an object is his body, whereas in 
Lather's explication he declares where bis body is, within, with, 
->r under the bread; but in no wise what his body is. ' It is 
cjear (observes Bossueton this passage) thai Jesus Chris! having 
taken bread to make something of it, was hound to declare to us 

1 A'.../ against Lather, p. 336. ^Oonferena i •/■ ifonlobel, Geneva, Lfe87, p. i'j. 



220 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

what it was he wished to make it : and it is not less evident that 
this bread became what the Almighty wished it to be made. 
Now these words shew that he wished to make it his body, in 
whatever manner it may be understood: because he said this h 
my body. If then this bread did not become his body in figure, 
it became so in effect : and we must necessarily admit either the 
change in figure or the change in substance. Thus by merely 
attending with simplicity to the word of Jesus Christ, we must 
pass to the doctrine of the Church ; and Beza is right in saying 
that it has fewer inconveniences, as far as relates to the manner 
of speaking, than that of the Lutherans, that is, the literal sense 
is better preserved by it.' 1 

Tlospinian every where makes the same acknowledgment, as 
when he says, in refuting a work of Luther's : If we must ex- 
clude all figure from the words of Jesus Christ, the opinion of 
those who follow the Pope is correct.' 2 The same author, as 
well as other defenders of the figurative sense, remark with much 
correctness against Luther, that Jesus Christ did not say my 
body is here, or my body is under this and with this: or, this 
contains my body ; but simply, this is my body. Whence it fol- 
lows that he in no wise wished to give his disciples a substance 
which contains or accompanies his body, but his body without 
mixture of any foreign substance.' 

Calvin frequently insists upon this same truth ; 3 but not to 
dwell too long upon particular authorities, let us listen to an en- 
tire synod of Zuinglius : that of Czeuger in Poland, related in 
the Geneva collection. This synod demonstrates that the con- 
substantiation of Lutherans is indefensible, 'because, says the 
synod, as the rod of Moses could not have become a serpent 
without transubstantiation, and as the water was not blood in 
Egypt, nor wine at the marriage feast of Cana without a change : 
so in like manner the bread of the Lord's Supper cannot be sub- 
stantially the body of Jesus Christ, if not changed into his flesh, 
• by loosing the form and the substance of bread.' 4 Let us say 

1 History of the Variations, Book II. No. VI. " Fol. 49. ^ Inst. 13. iv. xvii. 
No. j0. *Syn. C;at. tit. Ccena hi Syn. Geneven, part I. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 221 

with Bossuet, 1 that good sense dictated this decision. In fact, 
this bread remaining such, can no more be the body of our Sa- 
viour, than the rod, remaining a i*od, could be a serpent, or than 
the water remaining water could be blood in Egypt, and wine 
at the marriage-feast of Cana. 

Moreover, it is worthy of remark, that in spite of the bitter- 
ness and vehemence of Luther and his followers against transub- 
stantiation, they did not entertain so terrible an idea of it in the 
beginning. The simplicity of the words, which has always in- 
duced them to preserve the dogma of the real presence, for a 
long time kept them in the belief of the change of substance. 

Luther commenced by teaching it most positively in the fol- 
lowing terms : 2 ' Every action of Christ is an instruction for us, 
as he himself has told us : I have given you an example that as 
I have done, so you do also. Do this in commemoration of me, 
said he. "What is the meaning of do this? Is it not what I 
have just been doing, with you ? But what does he do ? he takes 
broad and by this word, this is my body, he changes it into his 
body, and gives it to his disciples to eat.' But soon after Luther 
changes his own doctrine, and proposes another quite different, 
sf ill however leaving his followers to adopt which of the two they 
pleased. 

' I permit, says he, that each one may hold which opinion he 
pleases Let each one know that he is free, without endanger- 
ing his salvation, to embrace which of the two he pleases.' 3 He 
had so little aversion to the Catholic belief upon this change of 
the substance, that he himself declares that his only reason for 
rejecting it was because he was so much pressed to receive it. 4 

'Hiat.de. Variations, liv. II. No. 33. 2 <Omnem Christi actionem, nostram 
f- instructionem, ut ipsemet dixit Ivxemplum dedi vobis ut, quemadmodum ego 
feci vobi* ita et vos laciatis. Hoc facite, inquit, in mei mcmoriani. Quod est, 
hoc facite? nonne hoc qood o<ro modo f'acio vobiscuin? Quid autem facit? 
pancm accipit, et rarbo quo (licit, hoc est corpus meum, mutat in corpus suum, ct 
ii.it mandncandnm discipulis.' Wol. II. p. 253, edit. Wittemburg. 15G2. 

*Capt ■!'. Int. t. II. edit. lat. set. fdl. 277. 'We may suppose, without fear 
of calumny, that his subsequent obstinacy in rejecting tin' change of the sub- 
stance, was nearly connected with his design of injuring the Pope and the Church, 
since he acknowledges that this motive had cause him U< wish that it were inhu 



222 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

He was even content that it should be inserted and clearly drawn 
ont by Melanchton first in the confession of Augsburgh, and then 
in the apology. 1 

■ Here is a literal translation of the 10th article of the Confes- 
sion, such as it was presented to the Diet. < Concerning the 
Lord's supper, we teach that the true body and blood of Jesus 
Christ are truly present under the species of bread and wine : 
that they are distributed and received : for this reason we con- 
demn the opposite doctrine.' 2 

A year after this authentic confession had been presented at 
Augsburgh, Melanchton found himself obliged to write a defence 
of it, which was equally approved and signed by all the Lutheran 
states. 3 In it he still more clearly establishes the change of the 
substance, in these words; 'We find that not only the Roman 
Church maintains the corporal presence of Jesus Christ, but that 
the Greek Church also maintains it at the present day, and has 
maintained it in ancient times. This we may discover from their 
cannon of the mass, in which the Priest publicly prays that the 
bread may be changed and may become the body of Jesus Christ, 
And Vulgarius, an esteemed author, clearly says that the bread 
is not a figure only, but that it is changed into flesh.' These two 
passages extracted from two acts solemnly approved of by all the 
party, evidently shew that the Lutherans, commenced by admit- 

power to get rid of the real presence : we know also of a similar avowal of his 
on communion under both kinds: 'If a council were to ordain or permit both 
kinds, to spite the council we would receive but one, or neither one nor the other. 
Tom. III. Jen. germ. 274. 

1 'And that I may not be taxed with ingratitude to the lessons of my master 
11 ■nry, I change my sentiments : I transubstantiate my opinion, and 1 say : I for- 
merly declared that it mattered little that the people entertained such sentiments 
on transubstantiation : now that I have seen such splendid and excellent reasons 
from the champion of the sacraments, it is no longer so. I pronounce him to be 
i npions and a blasphemer whosoever admits a change in the bread ; and him 
Catholic and pious, whosoever says with Paul: The bread that we break is the 
b idy of Jesus Christ. Anathema to him that shall say otherwise or who shall 
attempt to change an iota, a syllable.'* * Confess. Angus., 1530. » Apol. Couf. 
A ig. Ant. 4, de sac. in Explicat. 10 art. 



Luther against Henry 



King of England, om. II. edit. de. Witt. an. 1546. p. 307. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 223 

ting transubstantiation in expressions, and even by going so 
far as to condemn the contrary doctrine. We know that Me- 
lanchton was then seeking to draw the principles of reform near 
to those of the Church, and to present to the deist as much con- 
formity as possible between the two. Perhaps people may now 
feel disposed to call in cpiestion the authenticity of these two pas- 
sages : I grant that the first was notably altered, ten years after 
the first edition of the Confession of faith, and that the second 
has been totally retrenched in later editions of the Apology. It 
will therefore be necessary to say a few words by way of estab- 
lishing the authenticity of them both. 

1. Count de Kollonitch bishop of Winstadt, reprinted three 
German copies of the Confession of Augsburgh, taken from the 
imperial library at Vienna. These three copies, although printed 
at different times, and differing in many parts, are word for word 
the same upon the 10th article, of which I have given the literal 
translation. 1 

2. The conformity of this compilation with the passage in the 
defence renders its authenticity more probable, if it be true that 
the passage of the defence is itself authentic : and we shall see 
lower down that the Lutherans grant it to be so. 

3. It is certain from Sleidcn 2 and Melanchton, as well as from 
Chvtroeus 3 and Celestine" in their histories of the confession of 
Augsburgh, that the Catholics made no objection to the 10th 
article, in their refutation of the confession, produced by order 
of Charles V. Now it is not less certain that they would have 
Opposed it, if instead of the articles mentioned above, most con- 
formable to our dogma, they had discovered the one so contra- 
dictory, that was afterwards substituted in these words, ' That in 
the Lord's Supper the body and blood of Jesus Christ are given 
to OS with the bread and wine.' 

1 I Bead this fact in the controversial letters containing the motives that deter- 
mined hi- highness Prince Frederic, count palatine, 'lake of Bavaria, to become 
a Catholic, by Father Francis Seerdorf, who asserts thai hewrotewith the three 
mn. tfanheim, 1749, vol. ii. p. 100. *Sleid. Gonfeaa, ad art. 10. 
IGhytrcens, But. Con/. Aug. * CeL His. Out', ang., t. iii. 



224 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

4. Hospinian, a celebrated minister, maintains that this con- 
fession must be the original, because it is the one found in the 
edition of 1530, published at Wittembcrg, the cradle of Luther- 
anisni, and the usual abode of Luther and Aielanehton. He says 
that the article was afterwards changed on account of its favoring 
trausubstantiation too much, by specifying that the body and blood 
are received, not with the substance, but under the species of the 
bread and wine. Schlussenburg, a Lutheran writer 1 makes no 
difficulty of accusing Melanchton himself of having changed his 
loth article of the confession, from the leaning he afterwards 
discovered towards the opinion of the reformed. 

As for the passage from the Apology, it was so intimately 
connected with that of the confession, that it could no longer 
subsist after the essential alteration which the other had under- 
gone. Consequently they got a new edition of the Apology to 
be published by the same printer, 2 and instead of taking the 
pains to change the article, they suppressed it entirely. The 
discovery of this fraud produced many complaints, to which it 
was coldly replied that the article was not worth preserving. 
Heshusius disapproved of conduct so dishonest, and declared that 
he would have preferred to have had the error publicly confuted, 
rather than have given occasion to most unfavorable impressions, 
by suppressing it with secrecy and fraud. 8 

Grotius, who so well understood the spirit of Protestantism, 
expresses himself as follows : ' It is incontestable that according 
to the Fathers, and a great number of Protestants, with the signs 
is presented to us the thing itself (in the Eucharist), but in a 
manner imperceptible to our senses. Thus taught Bucer and 

others To speak my sentiments on the subject, I think that 

all our great disputants understand perfectly well what the ancient 
('lurch teaches, and what the Greek and Latin Churches still 
teach : but they pretend to know nothing of it, that they may 
have subject for declamation before those who are led more by the 
senses of the body than by those of the mind.''' 

'Lib. ii. Thiol. Calr. art. 10. s Valont. Eritrceus in tali, august, con/as. 
3 in comuientiiriolo depress. Ohrvsti in cceua. 4 Votam pro pace. p. 51. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 225 

Molanus, the learned Abbe of Lokium, in the project for the 
reunion of the Catholics and Protestants of the confession of 
Augsburgh, speaks in the manner following: ' Drejerus, Profes- 
sor at Koningsberg, admits here, in a certain sense, a substantial 
change. I would not vouch for this doctrine ; but I should think 
that T said nothing contrary to the analogy of faith, by supposing 
that by the words of institution, there is produced in the Lord's 
Supper, or in the consecration a certain mysterious change, in 
which is verified, in an indiscoverable manner, this proposition, 
■ I union in the Fathers, the bread is the body of Jesus Christ. 
The Catholics must then be entreated without entering upon the 
question of the manner in which the change of the bread and 
wine in the Eucharist is effected, to be satisfied with saying with 
us and assuredly they would be satisfied with it that this manner 
is incomprehensible and inexplicable: and yet such, as that by 
a secret and admirable change of the bread it becomes the body 
of Jesus Christ : and we must also entreat the Protestants, to 
whom that might appear a novelty, to make no scruple in saying, 
after the. example of the first reformers, that the bread is the 
body of Jesus Christ, and the wine his blood, because these pro- 
positions were formerly so umivefsal that scarcely can an ancient 
writer be found who has not made use of them.' 1 

The same pious and learned Abbe expresses himself elsewhere 
in these terms : ' I say that the body of Jesus Christ is precisely 
and substantially the same upon the altar, as in heaven and upon 
the cross, hut that it is there in a different manner. It was on 
the cioss in a natural and bloody manner; it is in heaven in a 
visible and glorious manner; whereas on the altar it is in an 
invisible, unbloody and accessible manner : but it is always the 
Same body. I acknowledge therefore with the Fathers of the 
eastern and western Churches, the real change operated in the 
Eucharist, expressed by the words transmutation, tnmselementa- 
tion, transubstantiation ; which signifies thai after the words of 
cur Saviour have been pronounced, there is found truly on the 

1 (Euvri i potthumet d* Bostuet, torn. i. [>. 96, Edit, in t. Amsterdam, 17C3. 



226 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

altar, by virtue of the union with the sensible species, what was 
not there before. I mean the person of Jesus Christ.' 1 

Such is the explanation given by a profound theologian attached 
to the confession of Augsburgh, who had no intention of giving 
offence on the subject of the Eucharist. He thought, and with 
great reason, according to what we have brought forward, that 
the change of the substance accorded with the ancient prin- 
ciples of Lutheranism laid down at the diet in the solemn con- 
fession of its belief. Would to God that those who at the pre- 
sent day belong to the same communion would regulate their 
sentiments according to the same principles with the learned and 
virtuous Molanus ! We might then entertain greater hopes of 
the union so much to be desired by the upright and well disposed 
of both parties. 

In addition to these favorable sentiments of the Lutherans 
and Calvinists, we have some testimonies of your own country- 
men in our favor. Bishop Forbes acknowledges the possibility 
of transubstantiation in the following terms ; ' There is too much 
temerity and danger in the assertion of many protestants who 
refuse to God the power of transubstantiating bread into the body 
of Christ. Every one allows, it is true, that what implies con- 
tradiction cannot be done. But as no individual person knows 
with certainty the essence of each thing, and in consequence 
what does or does not imply contradiction, it is an evident te- 
merity for any one whomsoever to place bounds to the power of 
God. I approve of the opinion of the theologians of Wittem- 
berg, who are not afraid to avow that God has power to change 
the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.' 

Thorndike allows of the change, and tells us in plain terms 
that ' the elements are really changed from ordinary bread and 
wine, into the body of Jesus Christ, mysteriously present, as in 
a sacrament : and this by virtue of the consecration, and in no 
wise by the faith of the receiver.' 2 

1 The result of a conference touching the Eucharist agitated between some re- 
ligious and M. Molanus, abbe of Lokkum. I regret that I cannot cite the whole 
of it at length. Let me recommend vou to read the whole of it, in this same 
volume of Bossuet. a Epi. li,= 3, c. V. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 227 

Bishop Montague declares ' that the change is produced by the 
consecration of the elements. In support of this assertion, he 
cites passages from St. Cyril of Jerusalem, from the liturgy of 
St. Basil, from St. Cyprian and St. Ambrose : he translates the 
expressions employed by these Fathers, by the words trans- 
mutation and transelemenfation. Still after having confessed 
the change produced by the consecration, after asserting that it 
was recognised by the primitive Church, he changes sides and 
concludes by declaring against transubstantiation. 2 

Samuel Parker, bishop of Oxford, defends and proves it, as 
follows; ' In the first place then it is evident to all men, that 
are but ordinarily conversant in ecclesiastical learning, that the 
ancient Fathers, from age to age asserted the real and substantial 
presence in very high and expressive terms. The Greeks stiled 

it, MKTABOLE, MBTAURIIUTHMISIS, METASKEUASMOS, METAPOIESIS, 

mktastoicheiosis. And the Latins agreeable with the Creeks, 
Conversion, Transmutation, Transformation, Transfiguration, 
Transch mentation, and at length Transubstantiation : By all 
which they expressed nothing more nor less than ' the real and 
substantial Presence in the Eucharist.' 3 The Bishop of Oxford 
was well aware that transubstantiation not only supposes the real 
presence but is actually the foundation of it, since, by virtue of 
the words, the substance of the body of Jesus Christ could not 

1 Appeal, eh. xxxi. 

8 From all appearance ho would have returned to it. This learned man thought 
almost in every thing with the Catholic Church, to which, it is said, he would 
have united himself, if hi- d iath which happened in 1G11, had not prevented him 
from executing this resolution. Four years later, the same cause unfortunately 
h ■ - i ae proj «t of a character still more celebrated for his learning and 
genius. Grottos, on quitting Paris, confided to his learned and worthy friend 
If. Bignon, that on his return from Sweden, where he was going to settle his 
, he w<e.dd give himself exclusively op to the affair of his salvation, and 
would unite himself to the Catholic Church, Be was returning and had al- 
ready reach sd Rostock, when he was Beized with a sickness which deprived him 

of life, the Church of a valuable! quest, and the world of a memorable example. 

The fad is positively asserted by M. Arnauld, who had it from M. Bignon him- 
- w \\'e know thai Path ir Petao upon h ai ing of his death, celebrated mass 
for the repose of his booL 

> Bishop Parker's reasons foj abrogating the Test, page 13, Oct. 30. an. 1C78. 
printed an. less, London. 



228 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

be found in the Eucharist, unless it had taken the place of the 
substance ef the bread. ' Thus far proceeded the Old Church 
of England, which as it was banished, so it was restored with 
the crown. But by reason of the interval of twenty years be- 
tween the rebellion and restitution there arose a new generation 
of divines that knew not Joseph. 1 .... In short, .... If they 
own a real Presence, we see from the premises how little the 
controversie is between that and Transubstantiation, as it is truly 
and ingeniously understood by all the reformed Churches. If 
they do not, they disown the doctrine both of the Church of 
England, and the Church Catholic, and then if they own only a 
figurative Presence (and it is plain they own no other) they stand 
condemned of Heresie by almost all the Churches in the Chris- 
tian world : and if this be the thing pretended to be set up (as 
it certainly is by the authors and contrivers of it) by renouncing 
Transubstantiation, then the result and bottom of the law is 
under this pretence to bring a new Heresie by law into the Church 
of England.' 2 

You see, Sir, that if the doctrine of the real presence has found 
in your country a great number of defenders, that of transub- 
stantiation has also had its distinguished advocates. You have 
seen them among the Lutherans, who in general are now become 
its declared enemies : moreover, (what indeed you yourself must 
be convinced of) even at the present day, the persons most at- 
tached to the confession of Augsburgh and to their first reformers 
may still, without injury to their principles, enter completely 
into the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, after the example 
of the pious and learned Hanoverian, the Abbe of Lokkuni. 
You have heard the Lutherans prove with us to the Calvinists 
that it was impossible to admit the figurative sense, and not hold 
to the literal sense : and the Calvinists joining us afterwards, in 
proving like us to the Lutherans that the literal sense ought no 
less necessarily to conduct them to the change of the substance. 
Thus you have seen them alternately ranged under the Catholic 
standard, victoriously attacking one another with the arms they 
' Page G2. •■< Pages 65, 66. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 229 

borrowed from us, and the Church triumphing in turns from the 
blows and the defeats they mutually inflicted upon each other. 

I will here spare you the detail of the grammatical cavils in- 
vented by the Calvinists to authorize the figurative sense against 
the change of substance. I know what bickering they have 
borrowed from the rules of grammar, which have been as incor- 
rectly forged us applied by them to each of the words, this is my 
body. I know also that they are not worth the trouble of being 
refuted, after having been so completely refuted by M. Nicole, 
with that depth , correctness and clearness which distinguish that 
great controvertist ' They easily vanish when brought in con- 
tact with the examples, of which the Holy Scripture furnishes 
us the idea and the subject. Could not Moses have said : This 
rod is a serpent, this water is blood? Could not Jesus Christ, at 
the marriage feast at Caua, have equally said : This water is 
wine? and when raising to life Lazarus or the only son of the 
widow of Nairn, this dead person is living? Would not all these 
propositions have been true to the letter in spite of the pretended 
rules of grammar 1 and would the reformed ever succeed in de- 
monstrating to us their incorrectness, by saying that if it is a 
rod, it is not really a serpent ? if it is water, it is not really blood 
or wine ? if they are dead they are not in reality living? Why 
persist obstinately in not seeing, and not acknowledging that in 
the month of God, or by his order these propositions operate 
what they declare? The Almighty commands, and nature in- 
stanrly obeys. Jesus Christ commands, and the grave gives 
back Lte prey, and death releases its victim. He speaks, and 
the water has changed its substance into that of wine, and the 
bread its Bubstance into that of his body. 2 

1 S'-'- Defeim de l» perpetuite de la Fox, torn. T. 
- ' Who can Bpeak in this manner, except him who holds all things in liis hand '.' 
who can make himself be believed except him to Whom doing and saying is the 
thing? My soul, stop here without i'll>' discussion I believe as simply, as 
Brmry as thy Saviour hath Bpoken, and with as mncfa submission as li" Bbewed 
authority and power. He desires in faith tin' same simplicity as he pul into his 
words. This it my body ; therefore it is his body. Thisismy blood; it i . 
fore his blood. In tin: ancient manner of communicating, the Priest said: the 
20 



230 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

But if instead of the bread which we perceive, it is the sub- 
stance of the body that we must believe, our senses will have 
deceived us, you will say, and their testimony, on which re- 
poses the certainty of the facts in the Gospel, will then be sha- 
ken. No, Sir, our senses do not deceive us here, for they do 
not pronounce sentence, they simply report; and their report is 
true in the Eucharist. They tell us that they there find the 
taste, the color, the appearance of bread, all which is there in 
effect. It is the mind which, from the report of the senses, 
judges and pronounces : at the sight of the species it would natu- 
rally and with reason conclude, that the substance of bread is 
also there, if on this particular occasion, it had not been admon- 
ished to check its natural propensity and to reform its judgment. 
After the instructions of Jesus Christ, the apostles must have 
judged, and all of us after them, not from what they saw, but 
from what they had heard. This is the exception, it is the only 
one. Except in this instance, and whenever there is no reason 
from distance or malady for mistrusting our senses, we ought 
confidently to rely upon them, remembering that our Saviour 
has himself appealed to them in testimony of his resurrection. 
See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and 
see : for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me to have." 

It is high time to bring this long discussion to a conclusion 
In concluding it, I entreat the adversaries of the real presence 
and of the change of the substance, candidly and conscientiously 
to say, whether it be the text of scripture that induces them to 
deny either of these dogmas ; whether, on the contrary, putting 
aside every other consideration, the text does not of itself natu- 
rally conduct them to it : whether they do not stand in need of 
exertion or violence to turn it from the proper to the figurative 
sense : whether they have not, with a view to sanction their 
supposed metaphor, been obliged to bring all the Bible into 
requisition, for the purpose of extracting a few examples, which, 
. after all, do not agree with the case in question, and can neither 

ho<hj of .J'-vtis Christ, and the faithful answered amen, it is so. All was done, all 
was said, all was explained in three words, I am silent, I believe, I adore, all is 
done, all is said.' Bossuet, medit. sur VEvang., journ. 22. ' Luke xxiv. 39. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 231 

warrant them to take the figurative sense nor save them from the 
natural energy of the words. They must allow, I am intimately 
persuaded, they must acknowledge that their repugnance to re- 
ceive the text in its simplicity proceeds solely from the philoso- 
phical consequences it brings after it, which frighten reason : a 
body existing in many places at the same time ! the body which 
suffered, which is in heaven, educed to so small a space in the 
Eucharist! bread and wine, according to all appearance, and no 
such thing in reality ! who can persuade himself of this ? who 
can believe it ? This is the ground of their infidelity, this is the 
scandal that determines them against each of these mysteries; 
it is better they think, to resist the Scriptures, better to turn aside 
ill ■• sense of the words of Jesus Christ, than to admit the sense, 
which they present with all its consequences. 

For my part, to act with the candor and good faith I wish to 
sec in them, I frankly admit these consequences. I allow that 
they are impenetrable, and not less alarming to human compre- 
hension : they are so, it is true. But is it less true that Jesus 
Christ promised that he would give us his flesh to eat, the same 
ffesh that he would deliver for the life of the world, and that this 
flesh would be meat indeed ? Is it less true that in executing his 
promise, and presenting the object he held in his hand, he said: 
Take, eat, this is my body f Is it less true that he had the power 
to operate what he asserted, and much beyond what we can un- 
derstand? I- it less true that he could not wish to mislead lis 
by fallacious expressions, being essentially truth itself ; that with 
a word he could have made us understand the figure, if he had 
not wi.-hcd us to understand the reality; that his goodness and 
his justice obliged him to do it, since he knew the disputes, the 
animosities, and the horrible schism, which the cause of this 
reality would one day occasion in the Church ? Is it less true 
I hat ii is much more sure and reasonable to mistrust ourselves 
than him; to believe in simplicity what he has said to us in so 
simple a manner, than to heap up difficulties for which, after all, 
we are no ways responsible ? Is it not wiser to turn away our 
eyes from them and to fix them upon him who has spoken ? We 



232 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

are guilty if we do not hear and believe him, but we cannot be 
guilty if we do not understand the whole extent of his discourse ; 
for he is as infinite in his intelligence as we are cireuin«cribed 
in ours.' He has made known to us his intention and ois will 
by all, that language possesses the most simple, most consistent, 
and intelligible, so that we cannot be mistaken as to the natural 
and proper sense which the words present ; all the parts agree 
together, it is within the reach of all men to judge of them. 
"What is not within their reach, and what never can be so here 
below, is the following up of the consequences that result from 
it, explaining the manner in which this reality of the presence 
is effected, and comprehending by what invisible cause and secret 
this change of substance is operated. But where has it been 
learned that we have a right to reject what is easily conceived, 
because in its train follow obscurities which we cannot penetrate ? 
Wherefore do we obstinately resist what surpasses our compre- 
hension, and close our eyes to what strikes us? Why do we 
wish to give an account to ourselves of that which we know to 
be impenetrable to our ideas ? Let us not foolishly seek to over- 
leap the boundaries by which we are circumscribed. Let us 
hold fast to our Saviour : let us rest firmly on his word ; and be 
assured that the appearances of contradiction and impossibilities 
which confound us now that we see through the veil and the 
cloud, will vanish from our eyes, the instant we shall contemplate 
the objects by the light of celestial splendor. Let us wait : we 
shall, each of us, soon be there : the longest life is very short. 

1 They must leave off all their quibbling and disputing, and take whatever they 
find plainly revealed in the Gospel ; remembering, that though infinite wisdom 
and goodness can never possibly oblige them to believe any thing that is really 
absurd and contradictory, or do any thing which is unreasonable ; yet they may 
be obliged to believe and practise many thing's, which unoonquered prejudice may 
tell them are absurd and unreasonable, ajid which they may think to be so, by 
using themselves to judge of the ways of God too much by human rules and 
measures.' Humphrey Ditton, Disourse on the Resurrection. Part I. sect. 4. 
p. 15. second edit. London: 1714. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 233 

LETTER VIII. 

Examination of tradition upon the Eucharist. 

I have engaged myself, Sir, to justify the decrees of the 
Church upon the Eucharist, to shew you their conformity with 
the doctrine revealed by Jesus Christ and transmitted to us in 
the two-fold deposit of the scriptures and tradition. The first 
of these you have just been examining, and in it you must have 
discovered the principal dogmas, which the Church obliges us to 
believe. The second is now about to be laid open before your 
ryes, and in it you will see these same dogmas taught at all times, 
and indubitably deriving their origin from the preaching of the 
apostles. It is an immense field to pass over ; but be not alarmed ; 
the ages, with which above all it will be our business to become 
well acquainted, are the most ancient. We will confine ourselves 
to tin; six first: and by proceeding methodically, we shall avoid 
the confusion into which we should otherwise be thrown by the 
quantity of monuments, facts, and passages, which will succes- 
sively present themselves to us. We will begin by arranging 
thorn into two classes, into general and particular proofs. The 
former will bring us acquainted with the belief of all the Churches 
of the world at once ; the latter will shew us the testimonies 
separately given by particular teachers in its favor. 

First general proof drawn from the discipline of secrecy. 

Every person who will pay any attention to the history of the 
lii>r agee of the Church will be struck with a point of discipline 
which I propose here to investigate with you, and which regards 
the inviolable secrecy observed by all the faithful on the sacra- 
ftente, and especially on that of the altar. Jesus Christ gave 
it as a precept to his disciples, when he commanded them under 
figurative expressions, not to </w<- dial which is holy to dogs, 
nor to cast pearls before swine. 1 When he instituted his august 
1 Matth. vii. 



234 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

sacrament, he would have none but his apostles for witneses : 
and we see that after his example the apostles never celebrated 
but in secrecy. The scripture positively remarks that they met 
daily in the temple, and there prolonged their prayers, but that 
they entered into the interior of some private house to participate 
of the body of the Lord ;' for this undoubtedly is the significa- 
tion of the breaking of bread, in the style of the new testament : 
the first enigmatical expression upon the Eucharist that we meet 
with in antiquity ; an expression moreover, which, while it was 
well comprehended by the Christians, could not be understood 
by the unbelievers. I know that St. Paul has spoken more 
openly and I have myself quoted his words : but he was writing 
to the Corinthians: his letter was addressed and entrusted to 
the discretion of the clergy of this Church, who read only to the 
faithful those passages, which were forbidden to those who were 
not of the number of the faithful. We must say as much for 
the passage in which St. Ignatius speaks with more clearness 
of the Eucharist in his epistle to the inhabitants of Smyrna. 

In ancient times the sacraments were designated under the 
general name of mysteries, which signifies things hidden. They 
were administered in private assemblies, after sending out all 
those who were not initiated. Until the time of the celebration 
it was permitted to the catechumens, the strangers, and even the 
unbelievers to remain. They assisted at the prayers, and the 
lessons that were read from the old testament by lectors, from 
the new, by priest or deacons. They could moreover hear the 
explanation of the scripture, reserved to the bishops, sometimes, 
but rarely, delegated by them to a priest. In these homelies or 
public explanations of the scripture, the preacher was exceed- 
ingly cautious not to speak of the mysteries, or if his subject 
obliged him to make allusion to them ; he did it with extreme 
reserve, covering the doctrine under enigmatical terms, that it 
might not be understood by the catechumens or the pagans. 
' We do not speak clearly of the mysteries before the catechu- 
mens, said St. Cyril of Jerusalem : but we are often constrained 
1 Acts. ii. 42, 46. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 235 

to use obscure expressions, in order that, making ourselves well 
understood by the instructed faithful, those who are not so may 
not receive injury from it." St. Ambrose says also, ' that if he 
had spoken of the sacraments, it would have been, not to instruct 
them in them, but to make a discovery of them by a kind of 
treachery.' 2 Nothing is more common in St. Chrysostom than 
this manner of speaking: 'The initiated alone know it: the 
mystics are instructed in it. I would wish, says he again, to 
Speak out clearly upon baptism; but I dare not on account of 
those who are not initiated. These persons make the explications 
of these things more difficult to us, by obliging us either to speak 
obscurely or to discover hidden things: and notwithstanding, I 
will explain myself as far as I possibly can, in covert and veiled 
terms.' 3 In the other Fathers, particularly in St. Augustine, 
we frequently find concealments, phrases and sentences broken 
off and purposely obscured, on the subject of the Eucharist. 

You see clearly, Sir, that this reserve never leaving them when 
they spoke in public, did not forsake them when they took the 
pen and composed works to confound heretics, pagans and Jews. 
If they had divulged the secret in their writings, it would have 
been as ridiculous as useless to be so scrupulously careful and 
skilfully discreet in treating the subject in their sermons. St. 
Cyril of Alexandria satisfies himself with answering to the objec- 
of Julian the Apostate against Baptism, 'that these mys- 
- profound, and so lofty*-, that they cannot be compre- 
hended but by those who have faith : that therefore for fear that 
by discovering the mysteries to the uninitiated, he should offend 
Christ, wlii forbids holy things to be given to dogs, and 
p saris to be cast before swine, he will not undertake to treat of 
t!i • more profound part- of them." And after having touched 
..hat upon it. he adds that he would say much more about 
it, were he not afraid of being understood by the uninitiated, 

because, says 1m-. j pie generally ridicule what they do not un- 

dorstand, and ignorant persons, not even being aware of the 

1 Catoch. \i. *Book on tin mysteries, for the newly initiated, ch. 1, No. 1. 
3 Horn, xl, on the lu Bp, to the Corinthiont, * Oontra Jii&ianum, lib. vii. 



236 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

weakness of their minds, contemn what they ought most to ad- 
mire.' Remark the reserve they imposed upon themselves in the 
works destined for the public. It is here expressly mentioned, 
as well as in other fathers : and we have always a right to sup- 
pose it, even when it is not announced in express terms. This 
habit of precaution and silence, so general in the primitive Church, 
continued up to the commencement of the fifth century, when 
we see that Innocent I, replying even to a bishop who had con- 
sulted him, dares not open himself in writing upon the mysteri- 
ous part of the Eucharist. As for the rest, says he, which it is 
not permitted me to write, we shall be able to speak of that by 
word of mouth, when you shall be here." Hear now in what 
moaner the Abbe Floury draws out in few words this discipline 
of secrecy with his usual accuracy and precision. ' It was cus- 
tomary to keep the sacraments concealed, not only from the 
unbelievers, but also from the catechumens : and they not only 
did not celebrate them in their presence, but they dared not even 
relate to them what passed in them, nor speak even of the nature 
of the sacrament. They wrote still less about them ; and if, 
in a public discourse, or in a writing which might fall in prophane 
hands, they were obliged to speak of the Eucharist or of some 
other mystery, they did it in obscure and enigmatical terms.' 

But how then, you will ask me, did the faithful come to the 
knowledge of them ? and what were the occasions on which the 
bishops openly explained to thtfm the doctrine of the mysteries ? 
"When the catechumens had been sufficiently proved and appeared 
worthy to receive baptism, the favor of which they persevered in 
soliciting, for it was only conferred upon those who asked for it, 
they were collected together at the baptismal font, on the eve of 
Easter or Pentecost, solemn and splendid nights, generally set 
apart for the regeneration of adults. It was here, before their 
immersion in the sacred water, that the bishop explained to them 
openly and fully the necessity and the effects of the first of the 
sacraments. On coming out of the baptismal waters, they were 
conducted, clothed in a white robe, to the assembled faithful, 
1 Ad Decentium Eugubinum cpiscopum. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 237 

whose number they were from henceforth to augment : the bishop 
then ascending the pulpit, and drawing away the veil which till 
thou had concealed the mysteries from them, brought them to 
light before the neophytes ; and the instructions upon the insti- 
tution, upou the nature and effects of the Eucharist, upon the 
sentiments of lively faith, of piety and love which the participa- 
tion of these august mysteries required of them, were continued 
every day of the first week. Such was the general practice of 
the Churches up to the fifth age, as many monuments of those 
primitive times testify and suppose. 

However true, and conformable this historical account may be 
with all that we know of antiquity, it has nevertheless been 
contradicted by Protestants, particularly by Calvinistic teachers. 
This I must not conceal from you. They have pretended, and 
you will soon be struck with astonishment at it, that this disci- 
pline of secrecy and reserve upon the mysteries, far from coming 
down from the apostles, was unknown to the three first ages, and 
only dates it origin from the fourth. These gentlemen have found 
it Suitable and convenient enough to suppose, that the pagans of 
the three first, ages wore perfectly acquainted with the doctrine 
of the Church on the Eucharist, in order to display with greater 
plausibility a pretended unanswerable objection against the Catho- 
lic dogma. But what they have invented against the truth has 
oeVer been able and never will be able to stand examination. 
The principle they here suppose is evidently contrary to facts and 

even to g 1 sense. In effect, how could these gentlemen, with 

their well known sagacity and talents, imagine, and how can 
they have the hardihood to attempt to persuade others, that what 
was generally known during the three first ages, ceased all at 
once to be known in the fourth 'I that all the bishops and all the 
members of every Christian society should then have formed the 
project, and have been able to accomplish it, to remove away in 
a day from every thing that was not Christian, the belief of the 
Eucharist, which the day before was unknown to no one ? Did 
ever anyone think of attempting to conceal from the world what, 
for centuries had been known over all the earth ? If it be a folly 



238 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to attempt it, it is a less supportable folly to suppose that such a 
tfiing was ever undertaken, and above all, undertaken with suc- 
? The secrecy so religiously observed in the fourth age, 
demonstrates therefore from this single fact, that it must have 
been eciually observed in anterior times, and up to the days of 
the apostles. It is very true that the fourth age, abounding 
more in monuments of every kind, furnishes us with many more 
proofs of the discipline of secrecy, than the three first, which 
were unceasingly agitated by persecutions. Prayer, and good 
works, were then the great occupation, and they had less leisure 
for writing, when every moment they were expecting to be called 
forth to answer for their faith, and seal it with their blood. 

But, Sir, if the three first ages offer us fewer direct proofs 
than the succeeding one, they present indirect proofs, which 
perhaps have still more weight, and which, I doubt not, will ex- 
cite in you still more interest and admiration for those heroic 
periods of Christianity. In fact, tell me, I pray, if the apostles 
and their disciples had made no mystery of the Eucharist, if in 
the three first ages, jews and pagans, unbelievers and catechu- 
mens, had known the doctrine and practice of it, would people 
have ever dreamed of forging, with regard to the celebration of 
this sacrament, the atrocious calumnies, of which undoubtedly 
you have heard ? "Would they have succeeded in gaining credit 
for them in the world? in raising up all nations against the 
Christian name ? in making these nations demand the punishment 
and death of the Christians, whom they abhorred on account of 
the erroneous notions they had formed of them, as abominable 
monsters, unworthy to see the day ? Ferocious men had invent- 
ed these horrors : men probably deceived had circulated them. 
They ran therefore through the provinces of the empire, every 
where admonishing the world to guard against a new sect of 
people, who, under the mask of exterior virtues, gave themselves 
up, in the secrecy of their mysteries, to the most shameful acts 
of cruelty and debauchery ; who slaughtered, as they confidently 
asserted, a new born infant, covered with flour, preserved the 
blood to drink, or to dip their bread therein, roasted their palpi- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 239 

tating victim, then divided its limbs among them for a repast, 
and terminated this horrid feast by casting a bit before a dog, 
which being tied to the lamps, overturned and extinguished them 
by leaping upon its booty ; that then men, women, fathers and 
daughters, mothers and sons were all confusedly and indiscrimi- 
nately jumbled together in the dark. Do not these imputations 
framed and accredited upon uncertain and confused notions of 
the body and blood, of which they had heard that the Christians 
participated, do they not, I say, shew, on the one hand the ig- 
norance universally existing among the people, and on the other 
the impenetrable secrecy observed by the Christians on what 
was believed and practised among them ? And now, Sir, how 
far back do you think these calumnies, and their bloody con- 
sequences may be traced *? As far as the very time of the apostles. 
We learn from Origen, 1 that from the birth of Christianity, the 
Jews had spread a report through the world that the Christians fed 
upon the limbs of an immolated babe ; from Tertullian, 2 that from 
the reign of Tiberius, these feasts of Atreus and Thyestes had 
been again conjured up through hatred and detestation of the 
Christians ; and in fine from Eusebius, 3 that Simon and his dis- 
ciples, Carpocrates, Basilides and Saturninus, were the authors 
of these atrocities. Simon', having received baptism from Philip 
the apostle, and participated in the mysteries, had returned to 
his art-magic and impostures, and by these calumnies, worthy of 
an apostate, he thought without doubt, that he should either force 
the Christians to renounce their religious observance of secrecy, 
or make them sink under the weight of this infamous accusation. 
If the apostles and their disciples had made no mystery of the 
Eucharist: if, in the three first ages, Jews and Pagans, unbe- 
lievers ami catechumens bad known its doctrine and practice, 
why did the philosophers, who wrote at that time, reproach them 
with the obscurity in which they kept themselves, and from it 

]. ret i ind to justify the accusations which the voice of the whole 
world raised against them. In like manner, at the entrance of 
the third century, Cecilius advanced, without hesitation, -that 

1 l Ah. iv, coitira Gdtum. " AjxJ., cap. xvii. 3 Jikt., Lib. iv. c. vii. 



240 ON TIIE CIIURCH OP ENGLAND 

the obscurity in which this religion was concealed proved the 
truth of a part of the crimes imputed to it. Why this necessity 
for hiding themselves and concealing their worship from the 
public eye, since men fear not to expose to light what is fair and 
good ?" So also at the conclusion of the first age or the commence- 
ment of the second, Celsus, the philosopher, frequently referred 
to the secrecy of the mysteries, and bitterly attacked the affect- 
ed privacy of Christianity, &c. 2 

If the apostles and their disciple had made no mystery of the 
Eucharist, if in the three first ages, Jews and Pagans, unbelievers 
and catechumens, had been accpuainted with its doctrine and 
practice, what need would there have been to put Christians to 
the torture, in order to extort from them a confession of the 
crimes imputed to them '? And yet Pliny the younger, governor 
of Bithynia, in the account he gave to Trajan of the Christians, 
says, on occasion of the reports which were circulating in the 
world about them, ' that he had on that account deemed it the 
more necessary to interrogate on the rack, two women who were 
said to have ministered in their secret assemblies. But I found 
nothing, adds he, more than an ill regulated and excessive super- 
stition.' 3 Do we not know moreover from a fragment of Irenseus, 4 
that in the persecution at Lyons, the Roman magistrates upon 
the irregular deposition of some slaves, persuaded themselves 
that the Christians actually practised what was laid to their 
charge, and endeavored by torments to get an acknowledgment 
to that effect from Blandina? But this Christian slave replied 
with a freedom full of wisdom ; ' How should those, who through 
piety abstain from meats otherwise lawful to eat, be capable of 
doing the things you impute to us?' Be pleased to observe this 
last instance of concealment in the heroic Blandina: we shall 
soon have occasion to refer to it again. Do we not know also 
from Eusebius, to whom we are indebted for the admirable letter 
of the Christians of Lyons to those of Asia, that Biblis, one of 
those who had been weak enough to deny their faith, ' was put 

'In Minutius Felix. 2 In Origen. 3 Pliny's letter to Tragan, in 105. 4 In 
(Ecuuienius, year 177. 



AND TII3 REFORWATtOW IN GENERAL. 211 

to the torture that she might be forced to confess the impieties 
imputed to the Christians? The torments roused her from a 
profound sleep : these transitory pangs made her reflect upon the 
eternal pains of hell : and how said she, should we eat the flesh 
of children, we who are not even allowed to eat the blood of 
beasts ? She then confessed herself a Christian, and was ranked 
among the martyrs." Thus the demonstrated ignorance of the 
Pagans upon the Eucharist restores to the Church a soul, whose 
overthrow it had for a moment bewailed, and replaces Biblis with 
honor at the side of the invincible Blandina. 

But if our adversaries, after so many convincing proofs, still 
require some that are direct, with regard to the three first centu- 
ries, Tertullian and Origen shall now supply them with proofs 
most positive. The former, repelling the charges of infanticide 
and impurities, exclaims ; ' Who are they who have told the world 
these pretended crimes? "Would it be those who are accused of. 
them ? But how could that be, since it is the common law of all 
the mysteries to keep them secret ? If they themselves did not 
make the discovery, it must have been strangers that did it. 
But how could strangers have any knowledge of them, since 
strangers are kept far away from the sight of the most holy 
mysteries, and a selection is made of those who are permitted to 
remain as spectators.' 2 If the Christians made no difficulty about 
speaking of the Eucharist, how could Turtullian say, that ' the 
common law of the mysteries was to keep them secret.' If the 
Pagans were instructed in them, what right had he to ask, 
'How could strangers become acquainted with these things ?' 
In the work ho addresses to his wife, he supposes as a fact, that 
the Christians believed themselves bound to secrecy, because he 
employs it as an argument for deterring her from taking an un- 
believer to her second husband. ' For by this means, says he, 
people fall into the crime of letting the Pagans come to the 
knowledge of our mysteries Might not your husband learn, 

« The Cln i-ti.m- ;if Unit tiic- and long ;iflri'\vnnls, observe! 111.' prohibition <>( 

eating blood, issn 'I in the eld law, and confirmed by Hie council of the apostles. 
■ApoL cap, i ii. second oenturj . 
21 



242 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

said he, what it is you taste in secret before all nourishment? 
and if he perceives that it is bread, will he not imagine it to be 
that which is SO much spoken ofV" 

Origcn in his noble refutation of the work of Celsus after say- 
ing in answer to his reiterated reproaches of secrecy, that in 
general the doctrine of the Christians was better known than 
that of the philosophers ; ' It is nevertheless true, he adds, that 
there are certain points among us, that are not communicated to 
every one, but this is so far from being peculiar to the Christians 
that it was observed among the philosophers as well as among us. 

In vain then docs Celsus undertake to render odious the 

secrecy observed by the Christians, since he does not even know 
in what it consists.' 2 This passage proves at once that the secret 
was observed both in the time of Origen and in that of Celsus, 
who knew not in what it consisted, that is, at the commencement 
of the third century and at the end of the first. Thus all kinds 
of proofs conspire to shew the discipline of the secrecy relative 
to the Eucharist during the four first ages. The fact is acknowl- 
edged by all for the fourth : and good sense demonstrates that it 
could not then have been established, if it had not existed from 
the very time of the apostles. The calumnies of unbelievers, 
the attacks of the philosophers, the tortures employed by gover- 
nors to extort a confession of the pretended crimes, are indirect, 
but convincing proofs of secrecy, and in addition to this, we 
have positive testimonies for the first, second and third centuries. 3 
I have been anxious to set this historical fact beyond dispute, 
and invest it with all the certainty you can desire, because the 
general discipline of secrecy necessarily supposes the universal 
belief of the five first ages upon the Eucharist, to be such as the 
Catholic Church has always taught: in fact, if, on the one hand, 
this discipline agrees exactly with our belief respecting the Eu- 
charist, and if, on the other, it should be found irreconcilable 
with the opinion which the Calvinists have formed of it, it must. 

i Tn his wife, B. ii. v. a Orig. contra Cehum, Lib. I. 

Sec in the Apjundix many authorities which establish the discipline of secrecy 
£. om the apostles to the commencement of the fifth century. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 243 

of strict necessity be concluded that what was concealed in the 
primitive Church is not what the reformed believe, but what we 
believe. In those times the concealment was made either of the 
doctrine" of the figurative sense, or of that of the reality; there 
is no medium, and if secrecy excludes the first, it necessarily 
admits of the second. All that remains therefore is to establish 
the truth of these two propositions ; first that the discipline of 
secrecy exactly tallies with the Catholic sense of the reality ; in 
the second place that it cannot be reconciled with the calvinistic 
• of the figure. I am persuaded that of yourself you will 
catch the argument before I explain it, so striking does it appear 
to me. 

1. I maintain that the ancient discipline of secrecy exactly 
chimes in with our belief upon the Eucharist. It would be su- 
perfluous to enter into a long dissertation to shew the incapa- 
bility of reason to attain to the inaccessible sublimities which are 
found in the dogma, such as the Church proposes to us and as 
we believe it. The reformed confess this, since they have made 
it the cause of their rejecting and attacking it. But in the sup- 
p isition that the primitive Church believed as we do, what was 
it to do ? and how must it manage with regard to the unbelievers? 
It must before all things, prove to them the certainty of the 
ition, convince them, by the miracles of Jesus Christ and 
by the sublimity of his morality, of the divinity of his mission, 
and Defer attempt to confide to thorn respecting the Eucharist, 
dogmas bo elevated, so alarming to human comprehension, until 
it hail sufficii n'lv prepared their minds and hearts for them: it 
mn-t have done precisely what it did. If the Christians had be- 
gun by bringing forward these mysteries, if they had commenced 
by Bpeaking openly of the real presence of Jesus Christ upon 
the altar, and of the miraculous change; of the substance which 
follows from it. they would have Bhoeked the senses and the 
imagination of men, and have driven thos:> from their religion 
whom they were desirous of attracting to it. What language, 
in fact, and what a strange doctrine for the Jews an I Pagans! 
What would not their senses and the pretended wisdom on which 



244 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

they prided themselves, have suggested against it ? Let us judge 
what would have been said by men who were not Christians, by 
what we are continually hearing from men, who, unfortunately 
for them have ceased to be so. It was necessary then for their 
interest charitably to spare their weakness : it was necessary also 
for the interest of truth, not to expose it to the railleries of those 
who were not yet in a state to hear it: and on the supposition 
that the dogma was then the same as it is for us, it cannot be 
denied that it was reasonable and even necessary to establish this 
discipline of secrecy. 

And to shew still more evidently the analogy of our actual 
belief with that of the first ages, I observe, that in supposing an 
exact parity between them, not only must the greatest secrecy 
have been then recommended, but it must moreover have been 
recommended from the two kinds of motives just mentioned, 
the one relative to the weakness of the persons, or if you please, 
the ignorance and blindness of the unbelievers, the other, to the 
dignity and divine institution of the mysteries : in order, that 
on one side, the unbelievers might not be injured or scandalized, 
and thus driven away from Christianity ; and on the other, that 
the mysteries might not be exposed to the railleries, sarcasms 
and objections of carnal minds. Now, in point of fact, (and 
this must strike you,) the discipline of secrecy turned exactly 
upon these two kinds of motives. They are each of them dis- 
tinctly pointed out by the Fathers. ' We make use of obscure 
expressions before the catechumens, said St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 
in order that those who are not instructed may not be injured by 
them.' Now hear the whole synod of Alexandria : ' It is not 
lawful openly to disclose the mysteries to the uninitiated, lest 
through ignorance they shou'd ridicule thorn, and lest tho cate- 
chumens should happen to be scandalized by an indiscreet curi- 
osity.' Such is the first kind of motives, relative to the state 
of the unbelievers or catechumens. 

You will recollect the reason alleged by St. Cyril of Alexandria 
for his concealment : He would have been afraid of being under- 
stood by the uninitiated, because, said he, people generally ridi- 



AND THE REFORMATION" IN GENERAL. 245 

cule what they do not understand, and ignorant persons, not 
aware of the weakness of their own minds, despise what they 
should most of all admire.' An author, anonymous indeed, bat 
of very high antiquity, since we find him translated by Rufinus 
in the fourth age, proves that it is extremely difficult to preach 
to a mixed multitude of persons, and often necessary in their 
presence to shroud the mysteries in ambiguous terms. 'For 
what is amongst us cannot be told indiscriminately to all persons 
exactly as it is, on account of those who lend a captious and 
malignant ear. What then must be done by one who addresses 
a crowd of persons strange and unknown to him ? Shall he con- 
ceal the truth ? But iu that case how is he to instruct those who 
arc deserving of instructions ? And yet if he display the naked 
truth before those to whom salvation is a thing of indifference, 
he is false to him by whom he is sent, and from whom he has 
received injunction not to cast the pearls of true doctrine before 
swine and dogs, who would fly in its face with sophisticated argu-. 
ments, would cover it with the mud of their carnal conceptions, 
and by their barking, and their disgusting replies would worry 
to death the preachers of G-od." Here you see a second series 
of motives relating to the dignity of the mysteries. You will 
find-both of them set forth in many ecclesiastical writers, such 
as Tertullian, Zeno, bishop of Verona, &c. They are precisely 
such as they must have been, on the supposition that the real 
presence or change of substance were then concealed in secrecy. 
Their fears and anxieties were such as they must certainly have 
entertained on this hypothesis : (heir precautions were those that 
if requires, and they were influenced by all the motives that it 
commands. The identity of apprehensions, dangers and mea- 
sures denotes the identity of* principles and belief. We have 
then solid grounds for concluding that it was the real presence 
together with its change of substance, that all the Churches of 
the world kept shut up in those times so scrupulously in their 
bosom. This is disclosed to us by He secrecy itself, as well as 
by the motives of the secrecy, BO exactly do they tally with this 
1 Lib, x i i tognit, 



246 on the cuuncn of England 

belief, as you have just seen. I add, for the completion of this 
moral demonstration, that they tally with this alone ; and prove it. 

2. In fact, what is there I ask, in the Zuinglian opinion re- 
quiring to be made so great a secret to pagans and catechumens? 
Ac-cordinjr to it, we become united to our Saviour, but only in 
spirit and by faith : prayers and homage are addressed to Jesus 
Christ at the right hand of God, but in no-wise upon the altar, 
from which he is supposed to be as far removed as earth from 
h saven : they call to mind his death, but without pretending to 
renew the oblation made by him upon the cross. For this opin- 
ion acknowledges neither sacrifice nor victim : it exposes, it is 
true, and distributes to its followers the bread and wine, but 
still remaining in effect as our senses perceive them : according 
to it, every change of substance is a gross error, and adoration 
an act of idolatry- These ordinary aliments, bread and wine, 
have here no other excellency than that of having been cho- 
sen by Jesus Christ as figures of his body and blood. What 
fault could the most obstinate Jew or unbeliever find with this? 
Is it not a common and received custom to leave some pledge of 
one's self to our friends on quitting them, that thus we may 
be brought to their recollection during our absence or after death ? 
and is it not a thing quite indifferent whether this or that object 
be selected to awaken remembrance, warm the heart, and fulfil 
between absent friends this ministry of reciprocal tenderness ? 
It is even plain that our Saviour, when dying for mankind, had 
nothing better to select and leave them as a memorial and pledge, 
than the common aliment of all mankind. In all this you will 
discover nothing revolting to the mind, nothing calculated to 
give a shadow of scandal to men and by consequence nothing 
that required secrecy. 

I know that the ministers ' have sometimes taken it into their 
heads to speak of the great wonders of their Eucharist, and of 
the incomprehensibilities to be found in it, without the real 
presence or any change of substance. But I also know that they 
affect his language merely to resemble that of antiquity, and to 
1 Calvin, Aubeitin, Clande. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 247 

shew that the passages in which the Fathers enlarge upon the 
difficulty of believing in the mystery, from its opposition to the 
senses and to human reason, correspond with their doctrine as 
well as with ours. But in point of fact, Zuinglius and Beza 
discovered no mystery at all in the Eucharist : they prided them- 
selves upon the discovery of the figurative sense, because it re- 
iinvtjd at once the difficulties and the scandal, and rendered the 
belief simple and easy to every understanding. No other than 
this is the judgment formed of it by the Zuinglians of your 
country, as I have often had occasion to learn from their conver- 
.-liinn and writings. ' In my judgment, said a writer well known 
amongst you, nothing has occasioned the loss of that due rever- 
ence, which is owing to the sacraments, so much, as the making 
more of them than the scripture has done : and representing 
them as mysteries, when they are plain religious actions. The 
unintelligible part of a sacrament is what the free-thinkers have 
chiefly made the object of their ridicule : but had the Eucharist 
been represented, as I have represented it, it could never have 
been mentioned by infidels with disrespect, at least it would have 
given them no occasion of treating it with any.' 1 

1 Bishop Pearce's second letter, written in 1730, to Doctor Waterland's Works. 
London, 1777, vol. II. p. 452. It may also be found in a note of Dr. Sturges 
refections on Popery, p. 100. 

To one who has reflected upon the texts of the New Testament, upon the doc- 
trine of th>- :j|».-t'»]i'- and primitive agC3; to one who is not a stranger to the 
testimonies of the holy Fathers; some of which I shall continue to produce to the 
end of tlii- dissertation, I know nothing more unchristian and more revolting 
than this system of the anglican prelate. It strips the Eucharist of all the 
wonders which our Lord had thrown round it, and with which his first, and faith- 
ful servants have at ;ill times 1) ileved El to b i invesl -1 : and boasts to have by 
this manoeuvre, re ooved from what are called men of strong minds, but who are 
more appropriately called a of weak minds, every pretext for irreverent de- 
clamation. \Yiih the admirable principles of these conciliating divines, it only 
remains for them to drawtheir pen over all the mysteries oi religion, because, 
i,, mod truth, ill • proud and of roars • weak « it- of the age, employ by prefer- 
ence th iir sarcasms and abuse against whatet us in doctrine. 

\.ll this uew example to the examples I have already adduced, of the infinite 
variations and perpetual discord into which the uncontrolled liberty of dogma- 
i iadi the members of your Church, and even the verj inmates of its sanc- 
toary, as you .-•■■ in these thri 



2 48 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Had the primitive Church thought after the fashion of this 
modern theologian, never would it have had any reason to with- 
hold its altars from the sight of the catechumens and the knowl- 
edge of unbelievers. Sheltered from the shafts of ridicule and 
malice, it might have celebrated its Eucharist with open doors, 
and have discoursed and written upon it without obscurity or dis- 
guise. But how did it act? Precisely contrary, and during full 
four centuries it rigorously maintained the discipline of secrecy 
respecting the mysteries, particularly respecting the one of which 
we speak. Let your Bishop Pearce, and whatever associates he 
can reckon in the world, acquaint us, if they can, with a plausi- 
ble reason, for such conduct. There is none : there can be none, 
according to their ideas of the Eucharist : their opinion and dis- 
cipline of secrecy cannot go together ; they are at eternal va- 
riance. All mystery being once removed from the sacrament, 
the primitive Church had no longer any cause for silence and 
secrecy. 

But what am I saying ? She would moreover have been urged 
by the most pressing motives to make a full explanation ofit. 
Atrocious and abominable actions are publicly laid to her charge, 
and she does not attempt her justification ! though this justifica- 
tion would be easily accomplished, by the simple declaration of 
her belief and practice. And if a candid explanation of this 
nature were found to be insufficient for the purpose, why did she 
not throw open her doors and admit her accusers or their emis- 
saries into her assemblies, and celebrate her religious repast in 
their presence ? Nothing could be more natural than this, on the 
supposition that she adopted the system of the figurative sense, 
at which the pagans could take no offence. The declaration 
published by these witnesses, of what had passed under their 
own eyes, would immediately have put an end to the calumnies 
that had gone abroad to the world. 

And, observe, it was not the common people alone among whom 

such ideas were current: they had reached the highest and the 

most enlightened classes of society. Numbers took up their pen 

iinst the Christians, and boasted that they had proved these 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 249 

crimes, on the grounds of their clandestine assemblies and the 
secrecy of their doctrine. What reply would the Christian apolo- 
gists have to make, on the Zuinglian hypothesis? Simply, or 
nearly this : ' So far are we from perpetrating the crimes which 
you lay to our charge, that we take, in our sacred repast, noth- 
ing more than a little bread and wine in memory of our divine 
master; the bread, as the figure of the body which he delivered, 
and the wine, as the figure of his blood which he shed for us. 
He himself, on the eve of his passion, instituted this holy and 
moving ceremony, commanding us to do it after his departure, 
in remembrance of his death, and also as a sign of union between 
us and him : we merely obey his commands.' But was this sat- 
isfactory and natural reply ever given ? Attend and see : ' Our 
accusers, says Justin, themselves commit the crimes of which 
they accuse us, and they attribute them to their gods. As for 
us, as we have no share in them, so we trouble not ourselves 
about them, having God for the witness of our actions and 

thoughts We entreat you that this apology may be rendered 

public, after you have replied to it as to you may seem fitting, 
to the end that others, may know what we are, and we may be 
delivered from the false suspicions, that expose us to punishment. 
They know not that we condemn the infamies publicly laid to 
our charge, and that we therofore renounce the gods who com- 
mitted such enormities, and who require the same from their 
adorers. If you will grant our request, we shall then lay open 
our maxims to the world — to convert it, if its conversion is pos- 
sible." Observe, he does not say ; we will expose our mysteries, 
we will celebrate before witnesses, we will throw open our doors. 
This however would have put an end to all calumnies and re- 
moved all suspicions. On the Zuinglian hypothesis, it is difficult 
to- imagine what could have prevented .Justin from publicly 
making an offer at once so simple and so natural.' 2 If we always 

1 A/in/, mill,. Am-'l. an. 117. 
i According to the Zuinglian system, again, how aro we to conceive that a 
nri -tian should ever be reduced bo have recourse to the following as- 
tonishing proposal, in proof o£ his ignorance. ' Even one of our brethren, at 
Alexandria, to convince the world, that in our mysteries there are none of the 



250 ox the crimen of exglaxd 

remain concealed, replied Tertullian, how have they discovered 
what we do? and by whom has it been discovered? Assuredly, 
not by the accused, for it is the common law of all mysteries to 
keep them secret. It must then have been by strangers. But 
whence could these know it, since the sacred initiations admit 
no strangers and reject the profane ?' In vain was their clandes- 
tine worship objected to them by the pagans : far from denying 
or renouncing it, Tertullian takes up its justification, and employs 
it to demonstrate how futile must be the accusations of those 
who know nothing of the matter. ' Do you really believe it 
possible, exclaims Octavius, that the tender little body of an in- 
fant should be destined to fall beneath our blows, and that we 
should shed the blood of a new-born babe, almost before it has 
received the shape of human being. Let him believe it, whose 

cruelty could accomplish such a deed as for us, we are not 

permitted to assist at a homicide, nor even to hear it spoken of: 
so far, indeed, are we from spilling human blood, that we forbid 
even the blood of animals at our meals. " The secrecy of the 
Christians is cruelly misrepresented and aspersed ; and yet Oc- 
tavius does no more than shew that they are incapable of com- 
mitting the imputed crimes, never discovering what it is that 
they really do. 'If our accusers be asked,' says Athenagoras, 
' whether they have seen what they assert of us, they will not 
have the impudence to say they have How can those be ac- 
cused of killing and eating men, who, as it is well known, can- 
not endure to behold even the death of one executed by law 1 
those who have renounced, as we have, the shows of the gladia- 
tors and of the beasts, believing that there is but little difference 
between him who beholds, and him who commits the murder.' 
You have seen Origen justifying their profound silence respect- 
ing the mysteries by the example of the philosophers, of the 

infamous practices attributed to us, presented a petition to Felix the governor, 
for permission to have a surgeon to make a eunuch of him (for it was said that 
this permission was necessary). Felix gave no reply of tins petition and the 
young man remained unmolested, satisfied with the testimony of his conscience." 
Justin in his Apology addressed to Antoninus, 150 years after the birth of Jesus 
Christ. ' In Minutius Felix. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 251 

Greeks and barbarians ; you have seen him in bis turn reproach- 
ing Celsus for reprobating the secret kept by the Christians, 
while he knew not in what that secret consisted. Such were the 
replies of the apologist : and such also they must have been, to 
be consistent with our belief. But according to the doctrine of 
the reformation these replies become inconceivable and absurd. 
For is it not absurd to establish a secret, and instead of being 
induced by the most powerful- reason to break it, still to continue 
obstinately to preserve and justify it, even when they knew 
nothing in if worth concealing V 

1 Truth obliges me to say that one of these apologists has not hesitated to re- 
move the veil and lay open the mystery of the altar. Justin has done it in his 
g •. We shall endeavor soon to detect his motive for so doing. But as 
h ■• thought proper to act in this manner, we will ask: what did he discover? 
what did hs make known? This is a curious and important point to ascertain : 
for most assuredly the doctrine that he discovered was the doctrine of the Church 
—the precise doctrine so carefully concealed by the other Christians. This dis- 
closure must for ever decide the question between us. Let the Reformation tri- 
umph, as is just, if the apologist here declares in formal or equivalent terms, 
that the bread and wine blessed by the bishop were received by the faithful, mere- 
ly as signs of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, absent in heaven : that the bread, 
without undergoing any change, ceased notwithstanding to be regarded as ordi- 
nary bread, because it was offered to Cod as an emblematical figure representing 
his Son. Will Justin hold such language as this? Let us hear him with atten- 
tion : these are the word- to the point; they are big with interest and importance: 
•This food we call the Eucharist, of which they alone are allowed to partake, 
who believe the doctrines taught by us, and have been regenerated by water for 
the remission of sin, and who live ae Chrisl ordained. For we do not take these 
immon bread and common drink, but as Jesus Christ, our Saviour, 
mad ■ in m by the word of Qod, took fle3h and blood for our Salvation; in like 
manner we h tve b en taught, that the food which has been blessed by the prayer 
Of the word- evhieb he -poke, and by which our flesh and blood, in the change, 
are nourished, becomes the flesh and blood of Jesus incarnate.' Such is the 
doctrine which Justin mad • ao difficulty in revealing to the Emp sror : you have 
here the word of Go I compared to the prayer of Jesus Chrisl : the same power 
and efficacj i-- attributed to each ; by the former Jesus became man, by the lat- 
ter, the bread and wine become his body and blood, and this change is not less 
real than was that of his incarnation. From this Bprings the following short and 
decisive argument. Justin here discovers that, which the Christians were uni- 
i T-.illi concealing in tfow what he discovers is the Catholic doctrine ; 

therefore the Catholic doctrine bad b *n universal^ concealed in secrecv among 

the Christians. Pray, reflect upon this argument; it al should open pour 

he" system. of belief thai you are seeking in tin- primitive Church. 



252 on the church op enoland 

Again, it is worthy of observation, that the public calamities 
were frequently attributed to the Christians, as being an impious 
and detestable race of men. Away with the Christians to the 
beasts; Christianas ad bestias. This enfuriated and brutal cry 
was very often resounded in the amphitheatres. Long were the 
Christians persecuted by the Emperors ; from the savage Nero, 
who first drew the sword against them, to the time of Diocletian 
and Licinius. 1 They were inhumanly put to death at Rome, 

But what motive could induce the apologist to make so public an exposure, 
contrary to the general discipline of secrecy, to which we find but this single 
exception recorded in history. To form a correct judgment upon the conduct of 
Justin, we should thoroughly understand how the writer was circumstanced. 
For my own part, I should be inclined to consider this first apology as a private 
memorial presented to the Emperor alone ; he probably having called for such a 
declaration from the Christians. The title professing the document to be ad- 
dressed to the Emperor j the Senate, and the Roman people, in no wise deters me 
from venturing this conjecture, since it was possibly nothing more than the usual 
form of petitions. In his second apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius and the 
Senate, he entreats him to publish it, that the world may be enabled to form 
an opinion upon the Christians. We find no such request in the first: from 
which, we may infer that he neither intended nor desired its publication. As he 
exposes the great mysteries of religion, which it was forbidden to publish, we 
are to presume, that he did not apprehend that they would be published, and 
that his object was, not to divulge the secret, but merely to make a confidential 
communication of it, to one most deserving of confidence, an excellent Prince, 
who was considered as a second Socrates upon the throne. The Prince does not 
appear to have betrayed the confidence reposed in him, for we do not find the 
pagans any better informed, in consequence of it. Thus the event would have 
justified the apologist, on the supposition that he confided the secret to Antoninus 
alone, with the hope, that so just and sensible a prince could terminate the bloody 
persecutions of the Christians, when once he became better acquainted with their 
real character. Although this expectation was not entirely, it was at least par- 
tially, realized. Whether it was that Antoninus did not do all that he could, or, 
what is perhaps more probable, could not do all that he wished, the persecu- 
tions did not entirely cease, and, on his account, we regret to find considerable 
numbers of martyrs in the subsequent years of his reign. This much however 
is certain, that he published edicts favorable to the Christians. He had received 
letters from various governors of provinces consulting him on the mode of treat- 
ment to be adopted in their regard, to which he replied, that they must not be 
molested, unless they were discovered plotting against the state. He wrote also 
to the cities of his empire, prohibiting the Christians to be disturbed ; and by 
name, to Larissa, Thessalonica and Athens and to all the Greeks. Of this we 
are informed by the historians, Rufinus and Eusebius, and also by Me'.ito, bishop 
of Sardes, in his apology addressed shortly after to Marcus Aurelius. 

1 Primuin Neronem csesariano gladio ferocisse. Tertul 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 253 

accused indeed, but never convicted of setting fire to the city. 
Tacitus asserts their innocence of this crime, when he says that 
they perished, the victims of popular hatred and execration, 
which originated not less in calumnious imputations than in the 
refusal of the Christians to sacrifice to idols and to swear by the 
genius of the Emperors. The tribunes and governors of pro- 
vinces put them to the torture, to force from them an acknowledg- 
ment of the crimes imputed to them. To this, Justin 2 bears 
positive testimony, and complains that ' to establish these calum- 
nies, slaves, children, and women were put to the rack and tor- 
tured in the most horrible manner, to extort from them a con- 
fession of the incests and the feasting upon human flesh, of which 
the Christians were accused.' Call to mind the women whom 
Pliny interrogated on the rack after this manner : but, above 
all, remember the heroic Blandina and her companion Biblis : 
Some pagan slaves in the service of the Christians, fearing the 
torments endured by the faithful, and instigated by the soldiers, 
falsely accused the Christians of Thyestean feasts and incestuous 

marriages and of every abomination that decency forbids to 

mention or think upon, and which we cannot even believe men 
capable of committing. These calumnies being spread abroad, 
the popular fury was excited against us : even those who had 
hitherto been somewhat friendly disposed towards us, were then 
filled with the general indignation against us. Then was accom- 
plished the prophecy of our Saviour, that they, who should put 
b|S disciples in death, would think that they rendered a service 

(0 God ' Speaking afterwards of Blandina : 'We all of us, 

and particularly her mistress, he says, were apprehensive that 
she would n at have the courage to confess, by reason of her bodily 
weakness. She however wearied out those, who one after the 
other, tortured her in every way, from morning till night. They 
acknowledged themselves vanquished, not being able to discover 
any other way of tormenting her: ;m 1 \vc\-t' ast mished to find 
her still breathing after the laceration and dislocation of her 

whole body The confession of the name of Christian seemed 

22 'Apol. II. 



254 ON THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

to invigorate her frame : her refreshment and consolation was to 
exclaim: I am a Christian, and no evil is committed amongst 
us." St. Irenaeus, a contemporary, and an eye witness, mentions 
that she holdly and judiciously added ; How can they, who, from 
motives of religion, abstain from meats otherwise lawful, be ca- 
pable of perpetrating the crime which you allege against us ?' 

I have before observed that, in the Zuinglian opinion, the 
Christians would never have suffered these calumnies to gain 
ground, but would have instantly upset them, by making a pub- 
lic declaration of all their practices and ceremonials, and by in- 
viting the pagans to attend their assemblies and witness the 
celebration of their harmless repast. But supposing that this 
simple means of sheltering their name from infamy was over- 
looked ; you must allow that it was high time to think of it, 
when punishment and torture stared them in the face. When 
Blandina and Biblis were interrogated respecting these pretended 
abominations, why did they not say : ' We take indeed a little 
bread and wine in memory and in figure of our absent Saviour, 
and also as a mark of our union together. ' This is our only 
repast ; to which you may, if you please, yourselves bear ocular 
testimony?' Would they submit to torture and death, when 
both might be avoided by a declaration at once so natural and 
so likely to open the eyes of their judges ? Is it consistent with 
any principle of reason or Christianity to maintain an obstinate 
and unmeaning silence upon that which could innocently be ac- 
knowledged, which there was not a shadow of a reason for con- 
cealing, and which, had it been but named, would have instantly 
disabused the minds of the people ? Does not such conduct ren- 
der a person guilty of permitting the commission of the enormi- 
ties and murders, which he might so easily have prevented ? 
Blandina however holds no such language and makes no such 
disclosure. In the midst of her torments, not a word of that 
kind escapes her lips. Her constant courageous reply is ap- 
plauded by the Christians for its judiciousness. Zuinglius and 

1 Letter of the Christians at Lyons to those of Asia, an : 177 under Marcos 
Auielius. Euseb. V. Hist: init. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 255 

his followers "would iu vain attempt to explain in what the dis- 
cretion and judgment of the martyr consisted. It can be satis- 
factorily shewn in the Catholic belief alone, in which, for the 
honor of Christ, and the interest and salvation of the persecutors, 
the mysteries were not permitted to be divulged. As it was im- 
possible to say any thing that might betray the secret, nothing 
remained for the accused but modestly to repel the calumny, 
which was, in fact, admirably done by this illustrious slave. It 
is truly noble and even more than human, in the midst of pro- 
tracted and horrible tortures, thus to bear in mind the wise and 
charitable discipline of secrecy: and the generous sacrifice of 
lilandina, crowned in heaven, will be a just subject of admira- 
tion to the end of time. 

Such, Sir, are the observatious I had to submit to your atten- 
tion respecting the discipline of secrecy. I remember well, the 
first time I discovered it, the greater part of these same ideas 
confusedly rushed upon my mind. Since then, it has frequently 
been to me a subject of serious consideration and deep investiga- 
tion. I flatter myself that my view of the subject is correct; 
and, if I am not mistaken, I have convinced you that it is so. 
For, on the one hand, it is perfectly unintelligible and inexplica- 
ble according to the Zuinglian opinion ; an unmeaning discipline, 
rigidly enforced and scrupulously practised, without motive or 
n, or rather against every motive and every urgent reason. 
On the other hand, it accords with the Catholic doctrine, and 
even .supposes it ; and on the supposition of this belief, is found 
to be wise, charitable and necessary at the period when religion 
v. i- proclaimed to a world of unbelievers. In a word, since 
this general discipline is necessarily interwoven with our belief, 
and from the fifth century is traced back to the apostolic age, itr 
is mosl evident, that in these first ages the Catholic dogma was 
both believed and taught in all Churches of the world. 



256 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



APPENDIX. 



DISCIPLINE OF SECKECY DURING THE FIVE FIRST AGES. 



FIRST AGE. 



Proofs drawn from the ignorance of the pagans respecting the 
Eucharist. 

'We are traduced as the most wicked of men, as capable of murdering infanta 
and feeding on their flesh, and afterwards of abandoning ourselves to shameful 
incests, having previously employed some dogs, accomplices in our debaucheries, 
to upset the lamps and thus give darkness and audacity to our abominations. — 
Thy imputation of these crimes is to be dated from the reign of Tiberius, as I 
have already said. The hatred of truth commenced with truth itself: no sooner 
did it appear that it became the object of general detestation. It counts as many 
enemies as strangers, and each according to their own fashion, the Jews by 
jealousy, the soldiers by exaction, and all of you by nature.'* 

' One might say that Celsus was desirous of imitating the Jews, who, on the 
preaching of the Gospel, spread false reports against those who embraced it : that 
the Christians sacrificed a little infant and devoured its flesh in their assemblies ; 
that to perform works of darkness, they put out the lamps, and then each one 
abandoned himself to his lusts with the first person he met. This most gross 
calumny for a long time made great impression on the minds of an infinity of 
persons, who, having no intercourse with us, permitted themselves to be per- 
suaded that this portrait of the Christians was faithfully drawn : and even to this 
time there are individuals so prejudiced amongst us that they will not even enter 
into conversation with a Christian. 't 

Kusebius writes, that ' the devil made use of Carpocrates, Saturninus and 
Meander, disciples of Simon, who fell after being baptized by Philip, to seduce 
many of the faithful : and that by their means, they had furnished to the pagans 
ample materials for calumniating and blackening the Church: that all the re- 
cently invented slanders were circulated by them to the disgrace of the Christian 
name ; and by this means has been circulated among the unbelievers an opinion 
respecting the Christians as absurd as it is impious: as if it was our custom to 

* Calumnies against the Christians, Tertul, Apol. ch. vii. t Origen against Celsus, 
No. -2U4, B. VI. p. -244, edit, in 40. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 257 

abandon ourselves to shameful incests with our sisters and mothers and feed upon 
execrable meat-.'* 

Tacitus, speaking of the burning of Rome, says that Nero laid it to 'a people 
odious by their crimes, who were called Christians.' He adds : ' This name came 
from Christ, whom Pontius Pilate had put to death under the Emperor Tiberius. 
And this impious superstition, repressed for the time, appeared again, not only in 
J udea, the source of the evil, but in Rome itself, where every thing that is black 
and infamous is collected together and put in practice. At first those only were 
taken, who confessed, then a great multitude, upon their report, were convicted, 
not to much of the burning of the city, as of hatred to all mankind.'! He after- 
v. a ds mentions them as wretches, who deserved the most exemplary punishments. 

Pliny, who belonged to the close of the first century, but who did not enter 
upon the government ofBithynia before the commencement of the second, wrote 
t>. the Emperor, J on occasion of the rumors spread abroad respecting the Chris- 
tiana, 'that he thought it necessary, for coming at the truth, to question two 
i, the rack, who were said to have waited in the secret assemblies. But 
1 discover nothing, continued he, more than an ill guided and excessive 
superstition.' 

Celsus an epicurean philosopher living at the close of the first and commence- 
ment of the second centuries, composed and published under Adrian, || a libel 
against the Christians and Jews under the bold and lying title of A True narra- 
tive. It has not come down to us, and is only known by the splendid refutation 
of it from the pen of Origen, who exposes and destroys his calumnies, and, among 
others, those which regarded the secrecj' observed by the Christians, and on ac- 
count of which Celsus most bitterly inveighed against them. 

SECOND AGE. 

' Were we to ask our accusers whether they ever saw what they report of us, 
there will not be found one, impudent enough to say that he has seen it. How 
can they accuse those of killing and rating human creatures, who, they are well 
aware, cannot bo much as endure to see a man even justly put to death. '§ 

• It will be -aid to us : Let every one of you destroy yourselves, and thus you 
Will go to wiui' God and disturb us no more. 'If lie replies that their faith in 
Providence forbade such an action, and he adds that f to substantiate the calum- 
nies heaped upon the Christians, they interrogated slaves, children and women, 
and put them to excruciating torments to extort from them a. confession of the 

repasts of human flesh, which were laid to the charge of the Chris- 
tian- 1 . Those uho accuse us of these crimes are thems Ives tie' perpetrators of 
them, while they attribute them to their gods: as lor as, as we have nothing to 
do with such abominations, we do not trouble ourselves about them, hai ing Cod 
for the witness of our actions and of our tie a 

In the persecution at Lyon-.** the magistrates, on the di io ition of some slaves, 
persuaded themselves that the Christians actualrj practi ed whal was imputed to 

• lli<<t. M. IV. eh. VIII. t Annals I.. \V. (Trajan Emperor in !•-'. || Adrian, 

hi U7. j \iln ii i uj durelius, 166. llJusiiu, 

| / to the same Emperor, 168. " Under Vfan us Aurelius, 177. 



258 on tiie church of England 

them, and they endeavored, by torments, to extort from Blandina a confession 
of tike deed: but this Christian slave boldly and judiciously answered: 'How 
should those who, from religious motives, abstain from meats otherwise per. 
mitted, ever be guilty of the crimes you lay to their charge?' CEcumenius has 
preserved this fact in a fragment of lreuaeus, an eye witness and soon after Bishop 
of Lyons and successor to 1'hotinus, who, after having passed his ninetieth year, 
suffered martyrdom in this persecution. 

To this we may add what is told of the slave Biblis, as we find it related by 
the confessors and Christians of Lyons, in a letter written by them to the Churches 
of Asia to give an account of the persecutions there raging. We owe the preser- 
vation of it to Eusebius. 

' I designedly omit many things, fearing to write what I could wish prudently 
to conceal, lest those who may read my writings should understand them in a 
v\ rong and perverted sense, and we should be accused, according to the proverb, 
of putting a sword into an infant's hand. ' There are certain things discoverable 
in the holy Scripture, although they are not clearly expressed. There will be 
others on which it will insist more explicitly : and others iigain, which it will 
merely touch upon ; but it will endeaver so to veil, as yet to declare them ; so to 
hide, as yet to reveal them ; and so to pass them over in silence, as yet to let 
them appear.'* 

See page 268 the passage from Tertullian, and page 2G9 another passage from 
the same writer. 

And, not to omit another passage from Tertullian, f attend to the language in 
which he reproaches certain heretics of his time. 'Above all, they make no dis- 
tinction between the catechumens and the faithful ; for the)' are both equally 
admitted to hear and pray together: even the Pagans are not excluded, should 
they happen to be present ; and thus no difficulty is made in casting bread before 
dogs, and pearls, though false ones, to swine.' He had already explained the in- 
tention of St. Paul, who, in confiding to Timothy the ministry of the Gospel, 
had commanded him to choose faithful witnesses, capable of instructing others, 
and not to open himself to every one indiscriminately, but according to the word 
of our Saviour, to avoid casting bread to the dogs or pearls before swine. 

THIRD AGE. 

Hear in what strains the Pagan Cecilius spoke of the Christians.^ 'A dark 
and subterraneous people, dumb in public, and speechless but in the most retired 
corners. Whether all oar suspicions respecting them be well founded I know 
not : certain however it is that a nocturnal and hidden worship well befits such 
a tribe. And although many things are called against them, the obscurity alone 
of their vile religion proves them entirely or in part at least. How are we other- 
wise to account for this affectation and studied concealment of their worship, 
whatever it be? For what is virtuous and laudable courts the day, and wicked- 
ness loves darkness.' 

See at page 277 another passage from Minutius Felix. 

* Clem : Alex, died, -J15, Strum., t Cook of prescription against heretics. {In 
Minutius Felix. 
22* 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 259 

'As for the mysteries, concealed under secrecy, and known to the priests alone, 
not only is the animal man forbidden to approach, but those also who, although 
exercised and instructed, have yet not attained to the priestly honor by their 
merits and years ; and not only are they prevented from seeing these objects any 
otherwise than obscurely and enigmatically, but they do not even receive them 
unless covered and veiled.'-- This passage must allude to the prayers and words 
of consecration. 

And again : 'As for any other discourse which shall contain secret things and 

treat of the faith of God and the knowledge of things that is reserved to the 

priests alone and confided to the sons of Aaron by a perpetual succession.'^ 

In another homily of Origen's, on Leviticus, we find this passage: 'Stop not 
at the blood of the flesh (that is of the sheep and oxen spoken of by Moses) but 
learn rather to discern the blood of the Word, and hear him saying : For this is 
my blood, which shall be .-hud for you. AYhosoever is imbued with the mysteries, 
knows the flesh and blood of the Word of God. Let us not, therefore, dwell 
uj.oii a subject kiiown to the initiated, and which the uninitiated ought not to 
kn ow.'t See also page 2C8. 

Zeno, bishop of Verona, in a sermon on continence, exhorts the Christian wife 
not to marry an unbeliever, lest such a marriage should cause her to betray the 
law of secrecy : ne sm proditrix kyis. He adds: 'And know you not that the 
sacrifice of the unbeliever is public, yours secret ? Know you not that any one 
may approach his without difficulty, whereas it would be a sacrilege for Christians 
themselves, if they are not consecrated, to contemplate yours?' 

FOURTH AGE. 

'The time admonishes us now to treat of the mysteries, and to explain the no- 
tion- of the sacraments. But if, before baptism and the initiation, we had at- 
tempted to speak on these subjects we should have appeared to betray rather than 
explain them.'H 

• livery mystery DugM to remain concealed under faithful silence, for fear that 
it should be rashly divulged to profane cars.'§ 

• Ami ur also have a discipline not to divulge the prayer, but to keep themys- 
t ri - concealed.*1f An allusion no doubt to the prayer of consecration. 

'There are nian\ things, whieh, crude, are unpalatable, but, dressed are agree- 
able. Concoct, then, in your heart these profound mysteries; let no premature 
.ii-.-nv.-ry of yours confide them too crudelj to delicate or perfidious ears ; lest he 
who bears you maj take alarm and turn with disgust from the meat, which, if 
bjtter prepared, would have enabled him to taste the sweetness of a spiritual 
nourishment.'** 

< The Lord spoke in parables to his h ar r in general: but to his disciples he 

ied in private the parables and comparisons he mad-' use of in public. The 

splendor of glory is for those who an btened: obscurity and dark- 

• Origin, Horn. IV. on Ch. Ml. of Numbers, t Flora. XIII, on Ch. XXXIII, of Le- 
viti 'us. I Horn. 1\. on Lev. t. No. 10. II St. Ambrose, Boot qf tin mysL i ies for the 

■ : i ■. i i, i '. :. } The fame, B. \. on Abraham, Ch. V, No. 38. UThesanie, 
Ch. IX. No. 35, on Cain and Abel. " Ibidem No. J*. 



260 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

nesHs the portion of unbelievers. Just so, the Church discovers its sacraments, 
t'i those who leave the class of catechumens: for we declare not to the gentiles 
Hi" hidden mysteries of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nor do we speak openly 
of the mysteries to the catechumens: but we frequently employ obscure expres- 
Bftros, that they may be understood by those, who are already instructed, and 
that the uninstructed may not be injured by them.'* 

I now present you with a very curious note which St. Cyril has put to the end 
of the preface to his Catechetical Discourse*, in which he is known to have ex- 
plained, in the clearest manner possible, the doctrine of the Church on the Sa- 
craments, particularly on the Eucharist. They were intended for the instruction 
of those \\ ho were about to receive baptism, and afterwards to participate in the 
sacrifice and the communion of the altar. The note, addressed to the reader, is 
conceived in these terms : ' Procure that these Catechetical discourses be read, 
by those for whose instruction they have been composed, viz: by those who are 
approaching the sacrament of baptism, and by the faithful who have already re- 
ceived it. But do not communicate them to the catechumens and those who are 
not Christians. If you do. you will have to answer to God for it. And if you 
take a copy of them, do it, I conjure you, in the presence of God. 

' They are not ashamed to celebrate the mysteries before the catechumens, and 
perhaps even before pagans, forgetting that it is written that we are to conceal 
the mystery of the king : and regardless of the precept of the Lord, that we must 
not cast holy things to the dogs, or pearls before swine. For it is unlawful to 
lay the mysteries open to the uninitiated, lest through ignorance they should turn 
th 'in to ridicule, and lest the catechumens should become scandalized through an 
indiscreet curiosity. 'f 

< This is what the uninitiated are forbidden to contemplate, and how should it 
ever be becoming to write and circulate an account of them among the people. '% 
' The Apostles and the Fathers, who, from the beginning have presented cer- 
tiin rites to the Church, knew how to secure a becoming dignity to the mysteries 
by the secrecy and silence in which they have enveloped them.'|| Here we have 
this discipline of secrecy and silence positively attributed to the apostles by the 
learned prelate. 

St. Epiphanius reproaches the Marcionites of the island of Cyprus, that they 
were so rash as to celebrate the mysteries before the catechumens.'§ 

St. . Gregory Xazianzen IT says that ' the greatest part of our mysteries ought 
not to be exposed to strangers.'** He says further that 'men should rather 'jive 
their blood than publish them.'tf 

'He who is to receive ordination requests the prayers of the faithful; these 
give him their suffrage and add the acclamations known by those initiated in the 
mysteries, and which I here pass over th ■ silence, for it is forbidden to say every 
thing before the profane Thy who cannot approach the holy table are with- 
held and banished from the sacred rails. '^ 

Gaudentius, bishop of Brescia in Italy, contemporary with Cyril of Jerusalem, 
*St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Cateeh. VI. t Synod of Alexandria, an. 310. speaking 
of tnc Meletians in the Apology of St. Athana^ius. J St. Basil, bishop of Cesarea, 
did in 379. || On the Holy Ghost, Ch. XXVII, Xo. G6. § St. Epiph : Hxtcs, XLII. 
It Died in 389. " Orat. XLII. ft Oral. XXXV. tf St. Chryso-tom, Horn. XVIII. 
on II. Cor. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 261 

preaching on Easter night, before the Neophytes, on their return from the bap- 
tismal fonts, said : 'In the lesson you have just heard, I shall select only those 
parts which may not be explained iu the presence of the catechumens, but which 
must be discovered to the neophytes.'* 

Treating again the same subject, he observes that he had put off until the 
paschal discourses ' to speak of the ceremonies described in Exodus, on the man- 
ner of celebrating the paschal solemnity, because, adds he, this splendid night 
requires our instruction to be adapted rather to the crcumstances of the time, 
than to the lesson of the day, in order that the neophytes may, for the first time, 
be taught in what manner we partake of the paschal sacrifice.'! 

The author of the apostolical Constitutions, who assumes the name of Clement, 

disciple and successor of St. Peter, but whom critics place in the fourth century, 

himself in the 85th canon as follows: 'These Constitutions, which I, 

Clement, have drawn up for you bishops, must on no account be communicated 

tu all sorts of persons, because of the mysteries contained in them.'| 

' Ask a catechumen whether he eats the flesh of the Son of man and drinks 

his blood, he knows not what you mean The catechumens do not know what 

the Christians receive. The manner in which the flesh of the Lord is eaten is 
concealed from the catechumens.' || 

• Th'y who know the Scripture understand perfectly well what Melchisedeck 
oflbred when he blessed Abraham. We must not here make mention of it, be- 
cause of the catechumens: the faithful however discover it.'§ 

' We have dismissed the catechumens and retained only you, to discourse to 
you respecting the mysteries, which the initiated alone are allowed to hear 
spoken of.'ff 

' What is this Cod, said Maximus of Medaurus, what is this God which you 
Christians consider as particularly belonging to yourselves and which you say 
you see present in your secret places? Etin lock abditU prcesentem voa videre 
cempomtia V** This question put to St. Augustine proves that the essence of the 
in-. -It;, \v:i- concealed from the pagans, and that there existed a report among 
them that the Christians adored in their secret assemblies a God as present and 
visible. 

FIFTH AGE. 

In the dialogue entitled the Immutable,]^ he introduces Orthodoxus speaking 
thus: • Reply to me, if yon please, in mystical and obscure terms: it is possible 
there may be present some who are not initiated in the mysteries.' (lie means 
to say that this writing intended for the public, might fall into the hands of the 
uninitiated, and x> betray the secret ) Eranistes : ' 1 shall understand you, and re- 
ply to you according to that.' And again, a little after: 'You have clearly 
proved what you wished ; altho -ions words. 

• In tie.' second dialogue, Orthodoxua repli ■-. to this question. By what name 

til, before the prieetlj consecration, the gift that is offered? It must 

• Gaudentiu.s .Serm. ad Neoph. t Treatise V. J Constit. Apost. can. 85. || St. Au- 
gUflJtine, Treatise II. on St. John. §The same, Serin. X. II The same, Serm. I. in. 
aptndicenl. •* The same, Eplst. XLIII. tfTheodoret. 



262 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

not be said openly, because it may happen that we should be heard by uninitiated 
persons.' Eranist a : • Reply then in divert terms, if you please.' 

' The poor shall cat an 1 shall lie satisfied : not all indeed, for all have not obeyed 
the Gospel ; but those who have had the divine love in their heart : it is eoncern- 
ing in -■ that the Royal prophet said that their hunger and thirst should be satis- 
li id, by the immortal nourishment that they should receive. Now, this divine 
n inrishment is known to us with the doctrine of the spirit: and the mystic and 
immortal repast is well known by all those who have been initiated in the 
inyst •ries.' * 

Innocent I, consulted by Decentius, bishop of Eugubio, on the sacraments, re- 
plies on the subject of the pax which some priests wished to give one another, 
before the consecration : ' The ceremony of the pax absolutely ought not to take 

place until after the things which I cannot reveal As for the rest, which it 

is unlawful for me to write, we can discuss them together when you arrive. 

* The same, Com. on Ps. XXI. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 263 

LETTER IX. 
Second general proof, drawn from the Liturgies. 

The Church has nothing to present us in her public worship 
so admirable as the sacrament of the Eucharist. The greater 
part of the other sacraments have reference to this, and prepare 
us for it. The greater part of the offices and ceremonies of the 
Church are but so many means or preparations either for the 
worthy celebration or participation of it. The Eucharist is the 
principal object here below of the thoughts and desires of the 
true Christian : it is the nourishment of his piety, the recompense 
of his labors, the consolation of his exile and earthly pilgrimage, 
his strength in dangers and afflictions, and even at approach of 
death ; it is in fine the pledge of his glorious resurrection. By 
representing our divine Mediator dying for the salvation of the 
world, it displays the greatest benefit we have received, the bene- 
fit on which rests our hopes of salvation. His bloody immolation 
took place on the cross : the oblation is renewed upon our altars, 
and will to the end of time continue to be the sole sacrifice of 
the new law, having taken the place of all the ancient sacrifices, 
from henceforth being the only one agreeable to the Supreme 
Being. 

The prayers preparatory to this sublime act of religion, those 
which produce the consecration of the bread and wine, those 
which follow, those which accompany the distribution of the 
Eucharist, the acts of thanksgiving by which all is terminated, 
together with the rites and ceremonies employed throughout, 
compose what is here called the liturgy. The first liturgy was 
undoubtedly drawn up by the apostles according to instructions 
given them by their muster, and celebrated by them in the as- 
semblies which they held at Jerusalem till the time of their dis- 
pereion. St. James, who remained in charge over that Church, 
and who governed if for twenty-nine years, continued to adminis- 
ter the Eucharist there, according to the form he had observed 
in common with all the apostles: those who had carried it with 



204 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

them iuto the countries which they traversed, communicated it 
to the bishopa and priests whom they ordained, and established 
it in the Churches where they fixed their sees. Antiquity will 
soon give us to understand this : for the present it may be suf- 
ficient to observe that the power of offering the bread and the 
chalice is the essence of the priesthood and its most eminent 
prerogative, and that its use is essentially obligatory upon the 
evangelical ministry. 

The most ancient monuments effectually bear testimony that 
the liturgy was in use wherever the religion of Christ was preach- 
ed and established. Of this Pliny 1 informs us, indistinctly 'tis 
true, but according to his means of information, when he relates 
that the Christians assembled on certain days before sun-rise, 
Bung hymns to Christ as to a God, bound themselves by mutual 
engagements not to any crime, but to refrain from thefts, rob- 
bery, adultery, from breaking their promise, or betraying the 
trust reposed in them ; and that they partook together of an in- 
nocent repast. 

Justin 8 goes into many details: he mentions that the assemblies 
were held every Sunday before day break ; that the bishop pre- 
sided in them : that they joined in prayer, and then in reading 
the prophets and apostles, which he, who presided, afterwards 
explained, exhorting the faithful to practice the beautiful in- 
structions they had heard. He also mentions that the faithful 
rose and prayed, after the sermon, and saluted one another with 
the kiss of peace ; that they presented the bread and wine to the 
presiding prelate, who offered up long prayers over the gifts that 
were offered, to which prayers the people answered Amen : that 
the deacons distributed the things sacrificed to those who were 
present, and carried them out to those who could net attend, &c. 
Justin does not give us the prayers recited by the president ; he 
is satisfied with mentioning their effect, which was to change the 
bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The 
description he gives of every thing that passed in these secret 
assemblies exactly corresponds with the order of the liturgies. 
• Letter to Trajan. 2 First Apology. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 2G5 

ireiifeus, a disciple of St. Polycarp, who himself had been a 
disciple of St. John, informs us that the liturgy came from Jesus 
Christ and his apostles. ' Our Lord, says he, taught the new 
oblation of his new Testament ; the Church has received it from 
the apostles, and presents it to God throughout the world.' 1 
These words are decisive : they shew that in the first and second 
century the liturgy was considered of apostolical and divine in- 
stitution : Irenaeua adds that this oblation was the same that 
Malachy had predicted, and which, putting an end to all other 
sacrifices, was alone to prevail from the rising to the setting of 
the sun. 

St. Cyprian complains of the schismatics, f who, slighting and 
abandoning the bishops, raise altar against altar, make up a dif- 
ferent prayer composed of unlawful words, and profane by false 
sacrifices the truth of the divine victim.' 2 We are then to con- 
clude that there were essential forms of prayer, to be learned 
only from the bishops, and not to be suppressed or changed by 
any one whatsoever. 'For, continues St. Cyprian, to oppose 
the established order, is to oppose the ordinance of Cod and in- 
cur his indignation.' Here is a clear testimony that the essential 
prayers of the liturgy were traced to the institution of the apos- 
tles of Jesus Christ, 

Firmilian, bishop of Cesarea, wrote to St. Cyprian, that 
twenty-two years before, a woman had deceived many of the 
faithful, even so far as to persuade them that she consecrated the 
Eucharist ; for she often had dared to make appearance of sancti- 
fying the bread by an invocation by no means contemptible, and 
of offering the sacrifice to the Lord with the secret of the accus- 
tomed prayer ; so that she seemed in nothing to swerve from the 
tedesiastical rule. 3 Firmilian says that this unfortunate creature 
hud seduced a priest, which accounts for her discovery of the 
prayers of consecration. This fact proves that there was a fixt 
formulary for the holy mysteries, that the priests alone were in 

■ Against herodee, B. [V. ch. XXXII. » Book on Unity. 3 In St. Cyprian, 
Letter 76. 



266 on the cnuRcn of England 

possession of it, and that it was the rule or canon from which it 
was unlawful to swerve. 

St. Epiphanius 1 who bears testimony to the tradition of his 
time, that is of the fourth century, declares as follows : ' Peter, 
Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas, 
Thaddeus and James the son of Alpheus, and Judas the son of 
James and Simon the Chananean, and Matthias chosen to fill up 
the number of the twelve, were all chosen apostles to preach the 
holy gospel in the world with Paul and Barnabas and others : 
and they have been the ordainers of the mysteries with James, 
brother of our Lord, and the first bishop of Jerusalem.' Here 
is a positive and indisputable fact : it is beyond doubt that in the 
time of Epiphanius the institution and order of the liturgies in 
use were attributed to the apostles, at least as to the essential 
part. 

We can have no stronger warrant or evidence than that given 
by St. Epiphanius, who, being a native of Palestine, had applied 
closely, in solitude, to the study of sacred and profane authors, 
and was afterwards raised to the bishoprick of Salamis in Cyprus, 
where he died in 403, at the advanced age of ninety-three. He 
here makes special mention of St. James, as the first bishop of 
Jerusalem, because the apostles, having begun to celebrate the 
liturgy together in that city must have proceeded regularly to 
compose and arrange the prayers, and decide as to what was 
essential. To this they would all conform of one common accord 
at Jerusalem, and each one separately, after the dispersion, 
would continue the same, in the Churches they established dur- 
ing the course of their preaching, and also in those where they 
eventually fixed their seas. 

The author of the Apostolical Constitutions, who wrote about 
the middle of the fourth century, declares, in positive terms, that 
the liturgy came from St. James. 

St. Augustine teaches 2 that we must refer to the rites of the 
sacrifice that which St. Paul prescribed to Timothy, in these 
terms : ' I desire therefore, first of all, that invocations, prayers, 
1 Hceres. 79. No. 3. s Epistle 59 to Paulinus. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 267 

supplications and thanksgivings be made for all men." For, 
says St. Augustine, by invocations, the apostle here understands 
those that-are made in the celebration of the sacred rites, before 
that which is on the table of the Lord is blessed ; by prayers, he 
understands those that are said, when it is blessed, sanctified and 
broken for distribution, and which are ended by the Lord's prayer 
almost throughout the whole Church : by supplications he under- 
stands those pronounced by the bishops when they bless the peo- 
ple ; and by thanksgivings those with which we finish the liturgy. 
You will tell me that St. Augustine speaks not here as witness, 
but as a private divine. True : it forms part of an opinion, of 
a method peculiar to himself of understanding and applying this 
of St. Paul. If however you reflect a moment, you 
will perceive that even this opinion supposes that in his time the 
liturgy then used was generally attributed to the apostles : for, 
if it had not been so attributed, if it had been generally consid- 
ered as of later origin, it would have been most evident to every 
one that St. Paul could never have alluded to it when writing to 
Timothy : and St. Augustine would not probably have thrown 
away his labor in pursuing an imaginary and fantastical allusion, 
by applying the words of the apostle to the different parts of a 
litunry of which he could have had no knowledge. The con- 
nexion which the great bishop of Hippo discovers and explains 
between the one and the other, supposes then that in his time it 
was considered that the liturgy, as celebrated in Africa, had 
been known to the apostles, in all essential points, and this is all 
the conclusion I wish to draw from it at present. 

The ancient author of a work falsely attributed to Proclus of 
Constantinople affirms, that ' The apostles after the ascension of 
Jesus Christ, before their dispersion, with one accord betook 
themselves t" prayer for days together, and, as they enjoyed 
great consolation in the mystical sacrifice of the body of our 
Lord, they celebrated mass with many prayers." 

St. Celestin in opposing hha errors of the Pelagians, referred 
to the ancient forms of prayer used in all the Churohes of the 

'1 Tira. ii 1. 'Fragment on the tradition of Hi-; mass. 



208 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

world, and which he attributed to the apostles. ' Let us consult 
t!i. 'sc Bacer dotal and mysterious collects, which transmitted by 
t'n' apostles to the whole world, are uniformly recited in the uni- 
versal Church, so that the rule of our prayers becomes that of 
our faith." What arc these collects and prayers? Celestin enu- 
merates them at length. They are precisely the same that are 
every where said by us on Good Friday, for the unbelievers, 
Jews, heretics, &c 

Here would be the place to set before you, in succession the 
belief of the principal Churches respecting the apostolicity of 
their liturgies : but, fearful of fatiguing your attention, I deem 
it more advisable to r*fer you for their full development and de- 
tail to the end of this letter ; 2 you will there discover the great 
national Churches referring each their respective liturgy to one 
or other of the apostles, from whom it had received, together 
with its faith, its form of public worship. 

I now come to some indispensable observations previous to 
my laying the liturgies open before you and before I develope 
those decisive consequences, which I intend to draw from them. 
If in the beginning the apostles had drawn up a liturgy with 
their own hands, it would have been ranked among the in- 
spired and canonical writings : not a syllable could have been 
added or retrenched ; it would have formed the constant, immu- 
table law of the universal Church ; all would have been uni- 
formity, even to a word, in the prayers and also in the ceremo- 
nies instituted to accompany the recitation. The arcane disci- 
pline, established by the apostles themselves, permitted them not 
to mark it out by writing, any more than the formularies em- 
ployed in the administration of the other sacraments. To give 
to each a copy of them would have been exposing them too much : 
there remained no other means of securing the transmission of 
them to posterity, than to intrust them to the zeal and the me- 
mory of their disciples, the bishops and priests, until Providence 
should please to grant the Church more favorable times. This 
was the plan determined upon by the apostles, and adopted by 
1 Epietle to the Bishops of Gaul, ch. xi. in 423. • Consult the Appendix. 



ASD THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 269 

tlieir successors. Of this I will give you a few satisfactory 
proofs. First, you will have remarked that among all the au- 
thors who have attributed the liturgies to the apostles, not one 
pretends to say that the apostles ever wrote them : they all sup- 
pose the contrary, and some positively declare it. St. Justin 
says that the presiding minister prayed at great length, as 
much even as he was able. The whole of the prayer therefore 
was not fixed and determined ; the formulary was not of so defi- 
nite and determinate a character as to admit of no prolongation 
or curtailment. Tertullian clearly testifies that the formularies 
of the sacraments and the manner of administering them were 
only known by unwritten tradition. 1 ' Mysteries should not be 
committed to writing, said Origen. Hysteria chartis non com- 
mdttendaJ Had the liturgy been written in the time of St. Cy- 
prian, he would certainly have availed himself of it, to shew that 
wine was to be mixed with water in the chalice, against those 
whom he rebukes, and who through ignorance or simplicity of- 
fered only water. ' We must follow, said he, in every particular 
the evangelical law, and the divine tradition.' 2 The gospel in- 
forms us that there was wine in the chalice which our Lord con- 
secrated ; and we know by tradition that this wine was mixed 
with water. St. Basil most expressly asserts what Tertullian 
evidently insinuates. ' Which of the saints was it, says he, that 
has left us in writing the words of invocation to consecrate the 
bread of the Eucharist and the cup of benediction ? For we do 
pot confine ourselves to the words given in the apostle and in the 
gospel ; we add others both before and after, as being very effi- 
cacious for the mysteries, and which have not been written.' 3 

When in the persecution of Diocletian, the tyrant's officers 
demanded the surrender of all the sacred books and whatever 
was employed in the service of the Churches, the traditor bishops 
replied; 'The lectors have; all the books: for our parts, what 
we have here, we give you.' They were the sacred vessels which 
they blushed not to produce. The lectors had charge of books, 
from which I hey read to the assembled Christians: now these lec- 

1 De OOrona militia. '-' Epiat a I < 'ceil. 3 Book on the Holy Spirit. 



270 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

tors never recited the prayers of the liturgy, they therefore could 
lint possess them : and since these traditor bishops asserted that 
there were no other books besides those entrusted to the care of 
the lectors, it is evident that the liturgies were not written. A 
later fact proves this more clearly still. 1 The Emperor Constan- 
tino, perceiving that the number of the Christians had greatly 
increased, was desirous that the new Churches, raised in conse- 
quence of this vast increase, should be supplied with the books 
necessary for the divine service : he wrote to Eusebius of Csesarea, 
enjoining him to procure fifty new copies of the Bible. Nothing 
was said about liturgies, although they would have been necessary 
to the service of the new Churches, equally as much as the Bible 
and the other things with which Constantine caused them to be 
supplied. 

Can you account for this reserve, Sir ? Can you explain why 
they were so fearful of committing the liturgy to paper ? This 
question, you must allow, would have now embarrassed you, had 
it not been put to you before, at an earlier stage of this discus- 
sion. Indeed, it is impossible, according to the notions of the 
Calvinists and Zuinglians, to account for this ancient observance. 
The prayers of invocation would not have borne, indeed could 
not bear any other sense than to ask of God to make the bread and 
wine, vile and common creatures, become the sign and figure, 
the emblem or memorial of the body and blood of Jesus Christ 
present in heaven, but absent from the earth : Now this petition 
is so simple and natural, so perfectly coinciding with the ideas 
and suited to the taste of all mankind, that there could have 
been no possible motive for its concealment, but contrariwise 
every reason in the world for its manifestation. Reflect here 
upon what has been said respecting the discipline of secrecy in 
general : the arguments there suggested by the subject return 
here upon us in their full force, and most naturally explain the 
extreme reserve of the Church in regard to the prayers compo- 
sing the liturgy. 

But, you will say, it being once granted, that, for several 
1 David Clarkson, on the liturgies. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 271 

centuries, the liturgies were not written, it must follow of course 
that there was no fixed and determined formulary for the celebra- 
tion of the holy mysteries, and that it is an error to attribute to 
the apostles the institution of the liturgies, such as we now have 
them in writing. 

This objection is partially, but by no means entirely founded 
on truth : as I hope soon to convince you. To come to a bet- 
ter understanding of the matter, a little explanation will be ne- 
cessary. 

1. You know that the formulary of faith was for many ages 
preserved among the Christians without the help of the scrip- 
tures. ' The symbol of our faith and of our hope comes to us 
from the apostles, and is not written, said St. Jerome.' 1 No one 
writes the symbol, says St. Agustine, and it is not to be read. 
Repeat it in your mind, each day, rising and retiring to rest; 
your memory must be your book. Sit vobis codex memoria 
VffStra.' 3 The like is to be said of the prayers of the liturgy. 
They were faithfully preserved in the memory of the bishops 
and priests, as was the symbol in the memory of the faithful : in 
both cases, their memories were their books. This living rule 
was held to be established by Jesus Christ and his apostles : 
Hence the ancient usage of obliging the priests to learn the lit- 
urgy by heart : which custom is scrupulously recommended and 
observed among the Copts. This precaution of not writing the 
symbol, the formularies of the sacraments and the prayer of 
consecration owed its origin to the general discipline of secrecy, 
and ended together with it, about the time of the council of 
Ephesua, in 431. 3 

'Epist, ad Pam. 2 Discourse to the Catechumens, on the symbol. 3 There 
wat 1 1 1 ' ■ 1 1 ii" longer any reason tor fearing that the mysteries should fall into the 
hands of the pagans, because the Emperors having embraced Christianity, the 
faithful were no Longer compelled to give up the Scriptures. Now therefore was 
the time to commit the symbol and the liturgy to writing. All most all the 
Churches musl have determined npon it, because the number of the Christians 
Inereaeing to an infinite extent, and that of the priests augmenting in proportion, 
it could no longer he expected that they should all be as fervent and enlightened 
;ti lli y were in and I I ofSt. .)u.-tin, so as themselves to make suitable 



172 on the church of England 

2. I have one simple remark to make to you, and greatly should 

I rejoice were it to catch the eye of all those, who call in question 

the apostolic origin of the liturgies. All the fathers who for the 

four first ages make mention of the liturgies, before they were 

committed to writing, and all those who had occasion afterwards 

to speak of them, are of one mind in attributing their institution 

to the apostles. Of this we have supplied the proofs. What is 

the language held now a-days ? You, Sir, and your contradictory 

compeers, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries first begin 

to call in question the ancient origin of the liturgies. In sober 

seriousness, do you pretend to put your opinion in competition 

with testimony of the whole Christian world, during the first six 

centuries ? Have you any historical information bearing on this 

fact, which was unknown to the ancients ? Are you not at so 

great a distance from those times, and were not they so near 

them, that their testimony must evidently be preferred before 

the judgment you venture to form ? They belonged to the 

primitive times, the greater number of them were connected with 

the very origin of things by a very few intermediate links ;' the 

tradition if it was at least fresh and vigorous ; and would you, 

prayers adapted to persons and times, or that they should all have memories to 
learn and remember these prayers, without the possibility of ever reading them 
in a book. Le Brun sur les liturgies, com. II. p. 132, edit, in 8. 

Up to this time we discover no trace of written liturgies, with the single ex- 
ception of the book of the apostolic Constitutions, falsely attributed to pope 
Clement, but the real author of which is supposed by the best critics to have 
lived some time in the fourth century, between St. Basil and Nectarius, that is, 
between 370 and 390. The liturgy is given in an abridged form in the 2nd book 
and at full length in the 8th. 

The 85th canon is very remarkable : ' These constitutions reduced into eight 
books by me, Clement, for you a bishop, must on no account be divulged, because 
of the mysteries they contain.' In the fourth age therefore they seemed to think 
that the discipline of secrecy was established from the beginning: they must 
therefore have been convinced that the liturgies were derived from the apostles, 
since the digesting of them is here attributed to Clement, the disciple and suc- 
cessor of St. Peter; and since in the eighth bo>>k the author positively declares 
that his liturgy cmne from St. James. 

1 At Lyons, tor example, in 201, there was but one intermediate link between 
[renseus and St. John, Pothinus who could have known him, because he was 13 
years of age when that apostle died, or Polycarp who had been his disciple. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 273 

who come fourteen or fifteen centuries after them, throw doubt, 
suspicions and uncertainty around their positive persuasion and 
unanimous deposition V Certainly it is now your greatest interest 
to divest the liturgies, if possible, of their apostolic origin, be- 
cause in them you read your condemnation : but in former times 
men had no interest either in contesting their real origin or in 
palming a false one upon them. Catholics, heretics and schis- 
matics were all agreed upon this fact. There was no dispute, 
nor reproach on either side. The conviction of all was equally 
strong — the belief universal. In your opinion, which of these 
two deserve the most credit ? "Would any tribunal, any unpre- 
judiced person lay more stress upon the doubts of a few persons 
of the eighteenth century, than upon the positive affirmation of 
all the Christian Churches of anticpiity, respecting a fact much 
more easily ascertained and of the first importance in those 
times, because it was every where intimately connected with the 
habitual celebration of the holy mysteries ? 

3. Again, when we attribute the liturgies to the apostles, we 
do it as to their substance but not as to every particular part 
and portion of them. Every book of common usage, every 
collection of prayers and ceremonies is subject to change. What 
is adapted to one time may not be so to another. Public worship 
could not be the same during times of persecution as in the days 
of peace, neither could the mass be celebrated in subterraneous 
vaults, or in prison, with the same pomp and on the same grand 
scale as they afterwards were in magnificent temples and basilicks. 
1 'articular circumstances, local calamities, or feasts newly estab- 
li-b'-il reqnired new and appropriate prayers. The prefaces and 
collects composed to commemorate the apostles were naturally 
posterior to them and drawn up by a more recent hand : the ab- 
rogation of public penances under Nectarius, in 390, must ne- 
cessarily have -truck out from the liturgy whatever was connec- 
ted with the penitents. In shorl it is no! surprising that there 
should have been many variations in the liturgies of different 
Churches, before tin ■ y win re written, it being certain that new 
variations have appeared since; they were committed to writing. 



274 ON THE CHURCH OF EXGLAXD 

Those changes and alterations only took place in the variable and 
accidental part of the liturgy, the substance always remaining 
the same. And even this substance must not be considered as 
remaining word for word the same, since it has been translated 
into many languages. It was the sense that was always to be 
attended to, the sense that was to be preserved unvaried through 
all the Churches, and which is actually found the same in all the 
liturgies. 

4. And here I solicit your increased attention till the conclu- 
sion of my proof. It is acknowledged that the Apostles had in- 
stituted the liturgies : we find, before and after their publication, 
the most respectable authorities concurring to the certification of 
this fact ; witness Irenseus, disciple of St. John, by one inter- 
mediate gradation : Firmilian, bishop of Cesarea, for Asia and 
the Gauls: Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, for Africa; St. Cyril 
for Palestine ; St. Epiphanius, St. Basil, for the Islands and 
Greece : the fragment of Proclus for Constantinople : Celestin 
I, and Innocent I, for Rome and Italy : and after their publica- 
tion, the popes Gelasius and Yigilius, Isadore of Seville, Hildui- 
nus of St. Denis, for Italy, Spain and Gaul : the author of the 
Apostolic Constitutions, Leontius of Byzantium, for Greece ; 
Athanasius and Rufinus for Ethiopia ; the ancient Copts for Egypt ; 
the Nestorians, Eutychians and Jacobites, for Syria, Armenia, 
Assyria, Persia and India. As a matter of history it is beyond 
dispute that the liturgies were instituted by the apostles. But 
how are we to ascertain what is derived from this source and what 
is not ? Nothing is more easy. When once the apostles taught 
by what prayers the mysteries were to be celebrated, these prayers 
was necessarily to be religiously observed by their disciples and 
successors, to be regarded as essential, and to pass from age to 
age, as the rule or canon, from which it would never be lawful 
to depart, except as far as might regard the arrangement of terms, 
but never so far as to change the sense and substance of the 
words given by the apostles. Hence it will follow that all the 
liturgies of the world, when first committed to writing, must have 
expressed the sense and substance of those apostolic prayers, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 275 

and that, whatever variety might exist in accidentals, the leading 
features of resemblance must be discernable in them all, and if 
I may use the expression, a family likeness indicative of their 
common origin. 

If then it should be found that in the midst of variations that 
a long series of ages, a variety of events and the peculiar idioms 
of different Churches may well be supposed to have rendered 
unavoidable ; if it should be found, I say, that, notwithstanding, 
all the liturgies agree together as to their sense and substance, 
in the prayers that precede, accompany and follow the consecra- 
tion, and if those prayers should be found clearly to express the 
real presence, transubstantiation, adoration and sacrifice, we must 
conclude that this uniformity, in every essential part of the lit- 
urgy, would denote an apostolic origin : for it would be impossible 
to account for such uniformity on any other supposition. No 
other cause can be discovered sufficiently preponderating and 
universal to unite in this manner all the Churches of the world 
in one common sentiment, in a firm adherence to the same dog- 
mas, and invariably an equally scrupulous attention to professing 
them in the same circumstances. There exists no council to the 
intervention or agency of which this singular uniformity can be 
ascribed : in fact no council how general soever could have suf- 
I Bar the purpose, since the heretics would never have followed 
its decisions, ami the sebismatical societies of the fourth and 
iii'ili ages, no less hostile to each other than to the Mother Church, 
would never have come to an agreement to adopt formularies of 
prayers, ami professions of faith, drawn up by a general council. 
Consequently, nothing less than the institution of the apostles 
and their authority, equally respected by all, could reasonably 
account for such a uniformity, if it actually existed in the Chris- 
tian liturgies, written in the fourth and fifth centuries. Now I 
will engage t'> prove to you, in the most palpable manner, that 
nil the liturgies of these times, noi only those \irfil in tin; Catho* 
lie Churches, but also those adopted in the Bchismatical and 
heretical societies, perfectly without exception agree in the 
prayers that precede, accompany and follow (he consecration, 



276 on the ciiURcn of England 

and that they express in the clearest and most energetic terms 
the belief of the sacrifice, the real presence, transubstantiation 
and adoration. We are now dealing with a fact of most easy 
demonstration : a fact established by authentic citations drawn 
from all these liturgies. I will collect them together and make 
them pass in review before you. 

We offer to thee our King and our God, this bread and this 
chalice, according to the ordinance of our Saviour, giving thee 
thanks through him for that thou hast vouchsafed to let us exer- 
cise the priesthood in thy presence. We beseech thee favorably 
to regard these gifts in honor of Jesus Christ, and to send down 
upon this sacrifice thy Holy Spirit, bearing testimony to the 
sufferings of the Lord Jesus, in order that he may make this 
bread become the body of thy Christ, and the chalice his blood : 
we offer thee &c. n The prayers are long and very beautiful. 

At the time of communion, the people exclaim : ' Hosannah 
to the Son of David, blessed be the Lord God who cometh in the 
name of the Lord, and who has shewn himself to us.' The ru- 
brick adds : ' The bishop gives the Eucharist saying : It is the 
body of Jesus Christ. The receiver answers. Amen. The 
deacon gives the chalice saying : It is the blood of Jesus Christ ; 
the chalice of life ; and he who drinks, answers Amen. And 
after the communion the deacon begins an act of thanksgiving, 
and says ; after having received the precious body and precious 
blood of Jesus Christ, let us return thanks to him who makes us 
partakers of his holy mysteries.' The bishop concludes by a 
most solemn prayer. 

In the liturgy, rather referred to than transcribed at length, 
in the second book, we read simply this : ' The benediction is 
followed by the sacrifice, during which all the people must remain 
standing, and pray in silence : and after it is offered, each in his 
turn must receive the body and blood of the Lord, approaching 
with a rcn-rencc and a fear due to the body of the King.'' 

Vouchsafe, God! we beseech thee, to make this oblation in 
all things blessed, acceptable, ratified, reasonable, and pleasing ; 

1 Liturgy taken from Book VIII of the Apostolic Constitutions, written in the 
fourth century. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 277 

that it may become for us the body and blood of thy well beloved 
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.' And after the consecration : ' Wo 
offer to thy supreme Majesty, of thy gifts and benefits a pure 
host, a holy host, an unspotted host, the holy bread of eternal 
life and the chalice of everlasting salvation.' And at the mo- 
ment of commnnion, the priest, bowing down in the sentiment 
of adoration and profound humility, addresses himself to Jesus 
Christ, irhom he holds in his hands, and says to him thrice ; 
' Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof, 
say but the word and my soul shall be healed.' And when he 
gives the holy communion, as also when he receives it himself, 
he again declares it to be the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 

Such was the language of the liturgy that was introduced into 
the British Isles in 595, and which up to the sixteenth century 
was universally celebrated in England, Ireland and Scotland, as 
it has been now for many centuries in France, Germany and Spain, 
and in every country of the world, where latin priests are to be 
found. 

It would be superfluous to introduce here the ancient Spanish 
liturgy, since we know, among others, from the learned Isidore, 
successor of Leander, his brother, to the see of Seville in 600, 
that, in the canon and every essential part of the mass, it was 
conformable with the Roman liturgy, from which we have just 
been making an extract. 

We have unfortunately no manuscript, nor monument de- 
scribing the liturgy of Gaul to us at full length and unmixed 
with other subjects. There is extant an abridged exposition of 
the mass composed by St. Germanus of Paris, about the middle 
of the sixth century. With the help of this little treatise and 
of what we find in the works of St. Gregory of Tours, who 
lived a few. years after St. G-ermaons, we are enabled to arrive 
at ;i tolerably exact knowledge of the ancient order of the G-illi- 
can mass, and by the Bame means il is thai the learned discover 
that it has more connexion and similarity with the oriental than 
with the Roman liturgy. 

1 Roman Liturgy, according to the Sacramentaries of Genuine. 

"2 i 



278 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Now St. Germanus, speaking of the gifts laid upon the altar, 
says: 'The bread is transformed into the body, and the wine 
into blood, the Lord having said of the bread, this is my body, 

and of the wine, this is my blood The oblation is con- 

secrated on the paten The angel of God decends upon 

the altar, as upon the monument, and blesses the host. "Whilst 
the fraction is made, the clergy, in a suppliant posture, shall 
sing the anthem : vouchsafe, we humbly beseech thee, to receive 
this sacrifice, to bless and sanctify it, that it may become for us 
a legitimate Eucharist in thy name, and in the name of thy Son 
and of thy Holy Spirit, being transformed into the body and 
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 1 

May the consoling spirit of thy benediction, thy eternal co- 
operator, descend my God, on these sacrifices, to the end that 

this aliment having been transformed into body, this 

chalice into blood, what we have offered for our sins, may save 
us by its merits. Ut translate. ' fruge in corpore, calice in cruore, 
proficiat meritis quod obtulimus pro delictis.' 2 

Praying by our fervent supplications, that he who changes 
water into wine may convert into blood the wine which we offer.' 3 

The Gothic -Gallican Missal of the end of the seventh century 
contains a prayer to God in the form of invocation : ' That thou 
niayest vouchsafe to regard with a gracious eye these gifts pre- 
sented upon thy altar, and that the Holy Spirit of thy Son may 
overshadow them.' And again this prayer after the consecration : 
1 We being mindful of the passion and resurrection of our most 
glorious Lord, offer to thee, God, this spotless host, this rea- 
sonable host, this unbloody host.' Again the following prayer 
before communion : ' Completing the sacred solemnities that we 
have offered to thee according to the order of the high priest 
Melchisedek, we devoutly beseech thee, eternal Majesty, for 
the grace to receive this bread changed into flesh by the operation 
of thy virtue, and this drink changed into blood, and to drink in 
the chalice the same blood that flowed from thy side on the cross.' 

1 Gallican Liturgy: Mass of the Circumcision. 'Mass of the Assumption. 
3 At the Epiphany. 4 St. James's Liturgy or the Liturgy of Jerusalem 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 279 

The priest takes the bread and says of Jesus Christ : 4 Taking 
the bread into his hoi}-, immaculate and immortal hands, raising 
his eyes to heaven, shewing it to Thee God, his Father, he 
gave thanks, blessed, broke, and gave it to us, his disciples and 
apostles, saying : Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken 
for you, aud for the remission of sins : (the people answered 
a me n.) In like manner, after he had supped, taking the chalice, 
and mixing the wine with water, looking up to Heaven, and 
offering it to Thee, God, his Father, he gave thanks, he 
sanctified, and blessed it and filled it with the Holy Ghost, and 
gave it to us his disciples, saying : drink ye all of this : This is 
my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for 
many, and which is given for the remission of sins. Ans. 
Anion.' And further on: 'We offer thee, Lord, this tre- 
mendous aud unbloody sacrifice ' and again: 'This life- 
giving Spirit, who reigneth with thee, who is consubstantial and 
coeternal with thee, O God, the Father, and with thine only be- 
gotten Son, who spoke by the law, by the prophets and by thy 
New Testament, who appeared and descended, in the form of a 
dove, upon our Lord, Jesus Christ, in the river Jordon ; who 
came down, in the shape of fiery tongues, on thine apostles, 
when assembled in a room at holy and glorious Sion. Send 
down at present, this most holy Spirit on us and upon these holy, 
kind and glorious presence, may make this bread the holy body 
of JeauB Christ. Ans: Amen. And this chalice the precious 
blood of Jesus Christ. Ans: Amen.' Before the communion 
the priest addresses himself to Jesus Christ upon the altar as 
follows: ' Lord, my God, who art the bread of heaven and 
the life of the world, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, 
and I am not worthy to partake of thy most immaculate mysteries: 
but grant, bj thy divine mercy, that thy grace may make me 
worthy to receive thy aaored 1". i v and precious blood, without in- 
curring condemnation, bul for the remission of my sins and ever- 
lasting life.' At the communion of the people, the Deacon says : 
' Draw near with fear, with faith and with love.' The people 
answer: Blessed is he, who cometh in the name of the Lord.' 



280 ON TUE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

'Receive us at thy holy altar,' says the priest at the oblation, 
1 according to thy great mercy ; and make us worthy to offer thee 
this reasonable and unbloody sacrifice, for our sins and for all 
the ignorance of the people " After the words of consecra- 
tion, which are not passed over in any liturgy with which I am 
acquainted, the priest bowing down, says in a low voice : ' We 
offer to thee this reasonable and unbloody worship, and we beseech 
thee to send down thy holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts : 
make this bread the precious body of thy Christ, (the deacon 
answers Amen.') And what is in this chalice, the precious blood 
of thy Christ, (the deacon answers amen,) changing them by the 
holy Spirit.' The deacon answers, Amen, amen, amen. Fur- 
ther on, the priest addresses himself to Jesus Christ, and says : O 
Jesus Christ, our God, look down upon us, from thy holy man- 
sion, and the throne of glory in thy kingdom : thou, who dwellest 
in the highest heavens, with the Father, and who art invisibly 
present ivith us here below, render us worthy, by thy mighty 
hand to partake of thy immaculate body and precious blood, and 
to distribute it to all thy people.' The priest and the deacon 
keep themselves in a posture of adoration, and both repeat three 
times : ' Lord be merciful to me a sinner :' ' the- people adore in 

like manner Towards the communion the priest says to the 

deacon : ' deacon draw near :' he draws near and bows down with 
reverence before the priest, who holds a particle of the blessed 
host in his hand, and the deacon says, ' Father, give me the holy 
and precious body of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.' The 
priest gives it into his hand, and says : ' I do give thee the pre- 
cious, holy, and most immaculate body of the Lord God our Sa- 
viour Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins and eternal life.' 

Then the deacon bowing down near the altar, prays in the 
same manner that the priest does, who takes the blessed host, 
saying : ' I believe, Lord, and I do confess, that thou art Christ, 
the Son of the living God, who earnest into the world to save 

1 Liturgy of Constantinople : by some attributed to the apostles ; since the 
seventh century ascribed to St. Chrysostom. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 281 

sinners, of whom I am the chief. Make me partake of thy mys- 
tical supper; for I will not reveal the mystery to thy enemies, 
and I will not give thee a treacherous kiss like Judas ; but, like 
the good thief, I confess, what thou art: remember me, Lord, 

in thy kingdom ' I regret that I cannot transcribe the whole 

of this confession, which concludes as follows : ' Pardon and re- 
mit me, Lord, our God, the sins, which I have committed 
agAinst thee, whether knowingly or through ignorance, whether 
by word or deed : thou, who art goodness itself, forgive them 
all, through the intercession of thy uuspotted and ever Virgin 
Mother : Buffer me not to incur condemnation, but to receive thy 

precious and inmaculate body ' The priest then presents the 

chalice to the deacon, who says : ' I come to the immortal King : 
1 believe, Lord, and I do confess, that thou art Christ, the Son 
of the living God:' and the priest says: Thou, Deacon, N. 
the servant of God, reccivest the holy body and precious blood 
of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins and eternal life.' The 
deacon going to communicate the people, says : ' Draw near with 
faith and in the fear of God.' The choir answers : Amen, amen, 
a an n ; blessed be he who cometh in the name of the Lord. 
The communion is administered to the faithful, by giving them, 
with a spoon, the consecrated bread and wine. The communicant 
says: 'I believe, Lord, and confess, that thou art, in truth, 
the Son of the living God.' ' Servant of God,' says the deacon 
to him, ' receive the most holy body and precious blood of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ.' 

This liturgy is used by all the Greeks who are in the west, at 
V, ii-. in Calabria and Apulia; by the Mingrelians and Geor- 
gians; by the Bulgarians, llussians and Muscovites; by all the 
modem Eielehite Christians, whether subject to the patriarch of 
Alexandria resident at Cairo, or to the patriarch of Jerusalem, 
or to the patriarch of Antiooh, residing at Damascus. 

We will now proceed to give some extracts from the liturgies 
of St. Mark, 1 of Si. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen. The 

1 Called also Che Alexandrian and Coptic Liturgy. St. Mark was the Brat 
of the Church of Alexandria. 
1 



282 ON THE CHOBCH OF ENGLAND 

Jacobite Copts, who were opposed to the council of Chalcedon 
in 451, have now continued to make use of it for more than 
twelve hundred years. 

In the preparatory prayer, the priests says : ' Lord, by virtue 
of thy holy Spirit, make us worthy to fulfil this ministry, that 
we may not fall into judgment before the throne of thy glory 

and that we may offer the sacrifice of benediction ' The 

following are a few words taken from the oblation : ' Lord, 
Jesus Christ, the only Son and Word of God the Father, bless 
this bread and this chalice which we have placed upon this sacer- 
dotal table : sanctify them, consecrate them, and change them in 
such manner that this bread may become thy holy body, and that 
what is mixed in the chalice may become thy precious blood.' 
Having devoutly repeated the words of institution, the priest 
continues : ' Christ, our God, we thy sinful and unworthy 
servants, adore thee, and beseech thee, that through thy gracious 
clemency, thou mayest send down thy holy spirit upon these gifts, 
which are in thy presence, to sanctify and make these holy things, 
the Holy of holies : that he may make this bread the holy body 
of our very Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which is given 
for the remission of sins and everlasting life to him, who receives 
it : (the people answer, Amen,') and this chalice, the precious 
blood of the New Testament of our ever Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who is given for the remission of sins and life everlasting 
to him, who receives it.' People, Amen. At the Preface before 

the breaking of the bread, the priest says : ' We, therefore, 

beseech him, the Almighty Lord God, our God, to make us 
worthy to communicate of his divine and immortal mysteries, 
the holy body and precious blood of his Christ.' At the breaking 

of the bread, he says: '0 Lord our God, thou, who has 

sanctified the oblations, which lie upon the altar, by the descent 
of thy holy Spirit.' A little before the communion, the deacon 

gives notice of it by these words 'With fear attend to God.' 

The people reply : ' Lord have mercy on us.' The priest then 
tikes the larger particle of the host and having elevated it bows 
down and exclaims : ' Holy things are for the holy.' And all 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 283 

the people cast themselves prostrate on their faces to the earth. 
Shortly after this, comes the profession of faith, which the priest 
makes in the following terms : ' This is the holy body and the 
pure and precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This 
is, in truth, the body and blood of Emanuel our God — Amen. 

I believe, I believe, I believe and I confess to the last breath of 
life, that this is the life-giving body of thine only begotten Son, 
our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. He received it from 
the Lady of us all, from the pure and holy Mary, mother of God, 
and made it one with his divinity without any commistion, con- 
fusion, or alteration of the divinity. He witnessed a good con- 
fession before Pontius Pilate, and, of his own free will, delivered 
himself up for us all on the wood of the holy cross. I truly be- 
lieve that this divinity was not separated from his humanity, no, 
not even for one single hour, or so much as the twinkling of an 
eye. 1 He delivered it for our salvation, for the remission of sins 
and everlasting life to him, who receives it. I believe this to be 
so in truth.' 2 

There is so much resemblance between the Ethiopian or Abys- 
sian liturgies and the liturgy of the Jacobite Copts, that it will 

1 Th sse words boar quite a catholic sense : they indicate the union but not the 
confusion of the two natures : they did not confound them, as did the Eutychians. 
And, although the Jacobites attached to Dioscorus did indeed reject the council 
of Chalcedon by which he was condemned ; they nevertheless pronounced anath- 
(■•■ ;i upon Nestorius and Eutychee, according toythe edict of union of the Emperor 
Zcno, which th •;. have always received. 

- We are indebted for our information respecting the Jacobite Copts to the 
and the laborious and luminous investigations of the learned Vansleb. 

II ■ was a unlive df Erfurt, and studied the Ethiopian language under M. LudofF, 
who prevailed apOn if" Duke of Saxony to send him to (he Levant and as far as 
Klhiopia, v. ith tie- expectation that he should there make some discoveries favor- 

buthcraniam. Being unable to penetrate as far as Ethiopia, Vansleb turn- 
ed his attention to the Jacobite liturgies, examined them thoroughly, by this 
lation discovered the errors of his communion, became a Catholic and 
irds a Dominican at Rome. Passing into France he was received and 
eh dished bj M. Colbert This great n mister, who only wanl d men capable of 
Boeonding hit vasl and noble views, senl him again to the Levant, with orders to 
purchase all the oriental manuscripts he could discover. '\ ansleb senl more than 
H ve hundred of them to Hie Royal Library. After again attempting in vain to 
reach Ethiopia, h< rett mod in 1676 to France, where he died a lew years after. 



234 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

suffice to cite a few particular passages from them. What is 
called the liturgy of the three hundred and eighteen fathers thus 
expresses the invocation : Wherefore Lord, we beseech and 
intreat thee, mercifully to send down thy holy Spirit, and to cause 
it to descend, to come and shed its light upon this bread, that it 
may become the body of our Lord, and that what is contained in 
the chalice may be changed and may become the blood of Jesus 
Christ.' 1 

Auother liturgy, translated into Latin by M. Ludoff, a Luth- 
eran, has the following words : ' Send down, Lord, we beseech 
thee, thy holy Spirit and his influence upon this bread and this 
chalice, to the end that he may malce them the body and blood 
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, our Lord for ever and ever.' 

The liturgy, called of the apostles, 2 after the words of our 
Saviour, goes on : ' The people say ; Amen, amen, amen ; we 
b slieve it, we are certain of it: we praise thee Lord, our God. 
Jf is truly thy body, and so do we believe.' And after the words 
over the chalice, the people say : Amen, ' it is truly thy blood ; we 
believe it.' We find here, before communion, the same strong and 
lively profession of faith that I extracted from the Coptic liturgy : 
we even find the expressions the same. The priest communicates 
the people saying : ' This is the bread of life, which comes down 
from heaven, truly the precious body of Emanuel, our God.' 
The communicants answer; Amen. The deacon presents the 
chalice, saying : • This is the chalice of life, which comes down 
from heaven, and is the precious blood of Jesus Christ.' The 
communicants answer ; Amen, amen. 

Liturgies have been much more multiplied among the Syrians 
than among the other Christian Churches. The liturgy of St. 
James is regarded by them as the most ancient and the most com- 
mon, as containing the whole order of the Mass, with which all 
the others agree. I have already cited some passages from the 
Greek version. I will now produce a few from the Syriac ver- 
sion. At the preparation for the sacrifice the deacon says: '0 

1 Tnk.-n from Vansleb's translation, Hittoirc <F Mexandric chapter on Transub- 
Btantiation. *Froai liL'iiauJot's Latin translation. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 285 

God, who in thy mercy didst accept the sacrifice of the ancient 
just, accept also in thy mercy our sacrifice, and vouchsafe to grant 
our petitions.' Between the words of institution and the invo- 
cation, which are the same as in the Greek version, the deacon 
announces the descent of the holy Spirit upon the gifts, by a 
most striking admonition : ' How awful is this time my brethren.' 
exclaims he, ' how terrible is the moment, in which the vivifying 
and holy Spirit is about to descend from the highest heavens upon 
this Eucharist placed in the sanctuary, and to sanctify it. Hold 
yourselves in fear and in trembling and be fervent in prayer : 
may peace be with you and the security of God, the Father of 
us all. Let us cry three times, Kyrie eleisoii.' After this comes 
the invocation, as it is found in the Greek version. The deacon 
then makes a most beautiful prayer aloud : ' Bless us again and 
again, Lord, by this holy oblation, by this propitiatory sa- 
crifice, which is offered to God the Father, which is sanctified, 
completed and perfected by the descent of the holy and lifegiving 
Spirit Tremble, ye ministers of the Church; for you ad- 
minister a living fire: the power that is given to you is above 
that of the seraphim. Happy the soul that approaches this altar 
with purity ! for the Holy spirit registers its name in heaven 
and conducts it thither. Tremble, ye deacons, in the sacred 
hour when the Holy Spirit comes down to sanctify the body of 

those who receive him Be mindful, Lord! of those who 

are absent, and have pity on us. Grant peace and repose to the 
souls of the faithful departed: pardon sinners in the day of 
ju Igment : place in repose and peace with the just and holy the 
souls of those who arc departed from us by death : may thy cross 
be their support, thy baptism their clothing: may thy body and 

blond to their guide to conduct them to thy kingdom ' 

The deacon, afterwards addressing himself to the people, says; 
• Pojo down your heads before the tlod of mercies, before the 
altar of propitiation, and before the body and blood of our Sa- 
viour.' At the breaking of the host, at the communion of the 
priest, we find it invariably to be the body of Jesus Christ that 
is broken and watered with his blood ; it is the holy and life- 



Zjo ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

giving blood that he receives. The deacon, administering it to 
the people, says: ' My brethren, the Church cries out to you ; 
receive the body of the Sou and drink his blood with firm be- 
lief: this is the chalice, which our Lord mixed on the wood 

of the cross : approach mortals, and drink it for the remission 
of your sins. 

Now look at "the invocation of the Syriac liturgy, 1 called, of 
St. Maruthas, metropolitan of Tagrit in Mesopotamia, and friend 
of St. Chrysostom : ' Have compassion on me, God ! the 
lover of man : send down upon me and upon this oblation thy 
holy Spirit, the Spirit which proceeds from thee, which receives 
of thy Son and perfects all the mysteries of the Church, which 
reposes upon these oblations and sanctifies them.' The people : 
' Pray.' The priest : ' Hear Me, God.' The people say 
thrice : ' Kyrie eleison.'' The priest, raising his voice : ' May he 
transmute and make, (transmutet atone efficiat) this simple bread 
into that very body which was immolated upon the cross ; the 
very body that rose again with glory, and never knew corruption ; 
the body that prepares life ; the body of the very Word of God, 
our Saviour Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins.' (The peo- 
ple : Amen,') and may he transmute and make the wine which 
is in the chalice to become (transmutet et perficiaf) the very 
blood that was shed on the summit of Golgotha ; the very blood 
which flowed upon the earth and purfied it from sin ; the very 
blood which prepares for life, the blood of the Lord himself, of 
the Word of God, and of the Saviour Jesus Christ, for the re- 
mission of sins and life eternal to those who receive it. 

At the offertory the priest says : 2 ' May Christ, who was im- 
molated for our salvation and who has commanded us to com- 
memorate his death and resurrection, himself receive this sa- 
crifice presented by our unworthy hands.' And, as he had 
asked the assembled people, they reply : ' May the Lord hear 
thy prayers, may thy sacrifice be acceptable in his eyes, and may 
he deign to receive thy oblation and honor thy priesthood 

1 From the latin translation of Rcnaudot. * From the Liturgy used by the 
Ncstorians, called the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles. Renaudot's latin translation. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 287 

The Priest. May thy holy Spirit, God ! come and repose on 

the oblation of thy servants ; may he bless and sanctify it ' 

(The prayers for the consecration are wanting in the manuscript.) 
At the breaking of the host, and the mixture of the two species, 
the liturgy uses no other language than that of the body and 
blood of Jesus Christ, the precious body and life-giving blood. 
At the communion the deacon cries out : ' Let us all approach 
with trembling. ' And afterwards again : ' My brethren, receive 
the body of the Son. The Church exclaims to you; Drink his 
chalice with faith.' At the thanksgiving the priest says : ' Christ 
our God, our Lord, King and Saviour has made us worthy, by 
his grace, to receive his body and his precious blood, by which 
every thing is sanctified.' 

' A\ 'ith hearts full of respect and fear, let us all approach the 

mystery of the precious body and blood of our Saviour; 

and now, Lord ! that thou hast called me to thy holy and pure 
altar to offer unto thee this living and holy sacrifice, make me 

worthy to receive this gift with purity and holiness ' At the 

communion the priest says again : ' Lord, my God ! I am not 
worthy, neither is it becoming that I should partake of thy body 
and the blood of propitiation, or even so much as touch them. 
But may thy word sanctify my soul and heal my body.' And 
in the thanksgiving after communion, the priest says: 'Strengthen 

my hands which are stretched out to receive the Holy One 

Repair by a new life the bodies, which have just been feeding 

upon thy livingbody God has loaded us with blessings by 

his living Son, who for our salvation descended from the highest 
heavens, clothed himself with our flesh, has given us his own 
Jlrsh and mixed his venerable blood with our blood, a mystery of 
propitiation." 

After the words of institution, the deacon says aloud: ' Si— 
!,,<■< and trembling/' Then comes the invocation, which the 
priest, bowing down begins as follows: ' May the grace of the 
Holy Spirit come upon as and upon this oblation: may it de- 
scend and repose upon this broad and upon this ohalico, and may 
'in the liturgy of the NestorianB of Malabar. 



288 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

it bless and sanctify them May this bread by the virtue 

of thy name, become the holy budy of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
ami this chalice the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 1 

The invocation runs thus : ' God ! may the grace of the 
Holy Spirit come, dwell and repose upon this oblation, which 
Vie present before thee; may it sanctify and make it, i. e. this 
bread and chalice, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Chriet, 
thou thyself transforming them, transmutante ea te, and sancti- 
fying them by the operation of the holy Spirit.' 2 

The liturgy of Nestorius and the preceding one of Theodorus 
resemble the first, called the liturgy of the apostles. 

At the offertory of the mass for the dead are found these 
words : 3 ' Holy Father, lover of mankind, receive this sacrifice 
in memory of the dead : place their souls among the saints in 
thy heavenly kingdom : may this sacrifice that we offer with faith, 
appease thy divinity and procure repose to their souls. At the 
canon, the priest speaking of our Saviour says : ' Taking the 
bread into his divine, immortal and spotless hands, which have 

the potoer to create, he blessed it, gave thanks, broke it, etc 

God ! send upon us and upon these gifts, thy holy Spirit, co- 
eternal and consubstantial with thyself (the deacon bows to the 
corner of the altar), that thou mayest make this blessed bread 
the body of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' And, holding 
the host over the chalice, he continues : ' That thou mayest moke 
this blessed bread and wine the true and real body and the trm 
blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, changing them by 

thy spirit.' The priest adores three times, kisses the altar, 

and from that time raises his hands no more over the gifts : but 

now, with his eyes fixed upon them, he reveres them as God, 

and with tears exposes his wants Towards the communion 

the priest adores, kisses the altar, and, taking the sacred body, 
dips it all into the precious blood , saying: ' O Lord, our God, 
make us worthy, we beseech thee to receive this sacrament 

' Liturgy of Theodorus of Mopsuestia. From Benaadot'a latin translation 
•From the liturgy of NestoriuSj Renaudot's latin translation. 3 Armenian liturgy! 
translated into latin by M. Pidon of St. Olon, bishop of Babylon, and into 
French by pore le Bron. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 289 

for the remission of our sins.' The priest, with humble reve- 
rence elevating the sacred body and blood of our Lord and Sa- 
viour Jesus Christ from the holy table, turns round and shews it 
to the people, saying: 'Let us with holiness taste this holy, sa- 
cred and precious body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, who, descending from the heavens, is distributed among 
us.'.... He then says: ' I confess and believe that thou art the 
Christ, the Son of God, who didst take upon thee the sins of the 

world O Jesus Christ my God! I taste with faith thy holy 

and life-giving body for the remission of my sins myGod, 

Jesus Christ, I taste with firm faith thy purifying and sanctifying 
blood for the remission of my sins.' Then, making the sign of 
the Cross upon his mouth, he pronounces these w T ords of St. 
Thomas the apostle : ' May thy incorruptible body be my life, 
and thy sacred blood the propitiation and remission of my sins.' 
Then, turning towards the people with the chalice: 'Approach 
w\th fear and with faith, and communicate in holiness.' During 
the communion of the peojile a canticle is sung, in which are 
these words : ' This bread is the body of Jesus Christ : this 
chalice is the blood of the new Testament : the hidden sacrament 
ifi made manifest, and by it God shews himself to us. Here is 
Jesus Christ, the word of God, he who sits at the right hand 
of the Father ; he is sacrificed in the midst of us, &c.' 

I cannot sufficiently exhort you, Sir, to read the whole of 
these different liturgies: you will find them in the admirable 
work of pere le Brun, 1 who has been my guide. I have followed 
him through his learned expositions, feeling convinced that I 
might safely rely on his authority. And now my only remaining 
wish is, that the few short extracts I have made from him, may 
create in you a laudable curiosity to read the whole of his work. - 

1 Explication litteial", historiqw- <-t do^rnatique des prieres et des ceremonies 
de la nif •.-.-!••, - 1 1 i \ .-tut lee anciem aut rare, et les rnonumens do toutes les Eglises da 
monde cretien. I rol: in Bmo. The English reader may profitably peruse the 
collection of liturgies to be (bund in an Appendix to that excellent work of (he 
hit-- Dr. Poynter, entitled, 'Christianity,' 4c, Tr. 

'-' The oriental liturgies were not much know n in Europe before the seventeenth 
century. Had they been brought to light about a century sooner there is every 
25 



290 ON THE CnURCII OF ENGLAND 

I know not what impression the ahove extracts may have made 
upon you. The impression they made upon me were such as I 
shall now candidly declare. In the first place, I became covered 

reason to believe that they would have deadened the rage of the reformers against 
the apostolic dogmas of the Eucharist, Certain it is, that, since their discovery, 
they have brought back to the primitive faith and Catholic unity men of the fit ^t 
talents and of great learning, who had imbibed from their infancy the principles 
of the reformation. Certain it is, that, they have produced much trouble and 
disquietude in the heart of many more, who, notwithstanding, could not be torn 
from their error, but who were compelled to publish their anxious wish to Sfje 
these liturgies again established in protestant communion?. ' I find, says I rrotius 
( Votutn pro pace) in all the greek, latin, arabic, syriac and other liturgies, 
prayers to God that he would consecrate by his Holy Spirit the gifts offered to 
him, and that he would made them the body and blood of his Son. I had there- 
fore good reason for saying that a custom so ancient and so universal, that it 
must be considered as coming from the first ages, ought not to be changed. 

Whiston, Stephens and Grabe, distinguished divines of your Church, being 
dissatisfied with the English liturgy, have composed some of their own, more in 
conformity with the oriental liturgies. ' The reverend and pious Ed. Stephens 
(says Whiston in the preface of his liturgy) not only zealously declared himself 
to be of the same opinion, but had himself drawn up an excellent liturgy very 

conformable to the original liturgies And more than this, he made use of it 

most openly in London for man}' years, to his own great satisfaction as well as to 
that of his whole congregation. Even the learned and pious Dr. Grabe had so 
great a relish and admiration for the eueharistic formulary, that, not presuming 
to communicate in public, because the actual Anglican form differs in some re- 
spect from the primitive liturgies, he repaired to the private congregation of Dr. 
Stephens, and there communicated in the joy and consolation of his heart.' 
Now the liturgy of Dr. Stephens, after the words of institution ran thus : ' We 
offer thee through Jesus Christ this pure and spotless offering, in the most hum- 
ble adoration In all humility we beseech thee, Almighty God, to accept 

this unbloody, reasonable and spiritual sacrifice Send also thy Holy Spirit 

upon these elements here spread out, that he may bless and sanctify them : and 
that to those who receive them, this bread may become the precious body of thy 
Christ, and this wine, the precious blood of thy Christ, for the remission of sins 
and life everlasting.' 

Dr. Grabe had composed two liturgies. One of them is in Greek, and in it 
are found these words : ' near us, merciful Father ! we humbly beseech thee ; 
send down thy Holy Spirit on us, and these gifts here offered, and make tin* 
bread the precious body of thy Christ, and what is in the cup, the precious blood 
of thy Christ.' And at the communion: ' Ma}- the body of our Lord, Jesus 
Christ delivered for me (for thee), preserve my soul and body (thy Ac.) to life 
everlasting! May the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for me (thee), preserve my 
soul and body to life everlasting!' This liturgy contained also a prayer for the 
dead. 

In the English liturgy there was this prayer; ' Vouchsafe, my God, to bless, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 291 

with confusion : in them I read my own condemnation and also 
that of the great proportion of Catholics of the present day. 
How lively, said I to myself, is the faith of these first Christians, 
who lived near the times of revelation and its accompanying 
prodigies ! how feeling is their conviction of the truth and di- 
vinity of its dogmas! how strongly do they express this their 
belief ! with what piety and holy fear do they approach to par- 
take of the sacred mysteries. How do they labor to keep theui- 
a (Ives in a fit state to approach ! and how eager are they to 
return again to the heavenly banquet ! They seem no longer to 
belong to the earth ; they lead the life of angels ; riches, honors, 
pleasures, all that can flatter the senses of man, they despise and 
forsake. Neither sufferings nor torments, nor death seem to 
affect them : their aim and object are eternity and heaven : good 
works, pure morals, prayer and a frequent use of the sacra- 
ments are the means they employ to arrive thither. And we, 
degenerate offspring of so holy a race, how do we behave ? Tepid 
and slothful inheritors of their name and belief, we scarcely 
possess a shadow of their virtues. The time and thoughts of 
generality of Christians are occupied with the pleasures and 
affairs of this world. Incredulity in some, stupidity of faith in 
others, indifference in almost all, have nearly exterminated prac- 
t'ral Christianity from among us. Observe their repugnance to 
t'le sacred table: by many it is entirely abandoned; many, 
whether from habit or for appearance sake, approach to it once 
in the year ; tepidity and thoughtless indifference accompany 

and sanctify, by thy word and thy Spirit, these thy creatures, this bread and 
wine, that they may become For us the body and blood of thy very dear Son.' 

Whi-ton's liturgy, prinl id at London, 1713, holds the same language. (See 

Pfaffio criptaanecdota, p. 346.) In 1716, many English and Scotch 

i ; to unit • themselves to tin.' oriental Church, ami establish 

a particular ril •• Two yean afterwards, they printed at London, 17ls. a liturgy 

i i English, in which are these words: • We give thee thanks for admitting us 

h >re to offer th se ih • sacrifice Send down thy Holy Spirit, the witness of the 

. i of our Saviour Jesus, on this sacrifice, thai He may make this bread the 
I) idy of thy Christ.' All this is, indeed, j " much homage paid to the apostolicity 
of our public: liturgy: hut of what avail were all these feeble attempts? It is 
neither by clubs and associations, nor by peace-meal, that the deserted path of 
truth is regained. 



202 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

their approach ; nay, shameful to say ! but too often appear in 
those who officiate at the altar. For, where do wo find the min- 
ister seized with fear and trembling ? To judge from the precipi- 
tation of some, and the cold formality of others, it will be 
difficult to believe that they even think of their exalted ministry, 
of the divine victim they arc about to offer for the salvation of 
the people, and of that divine furnace which they hold in their 
hands, and which is about to pass to their heart, without en- 
kindling a flame therein ? Unfortunate people ! and more unfor- 
tunate pastors ! whence comes this universal degradation ? I 
know full well the cause, and in spite of the pretensions of the 
age, I shall not hesitate to lay it to our profound ignorance. 
We appreciate only the knowledge of the things that pass, and 
view with apathy those things that never pass away. Our judg- 
ment, taste, inclination, and our whole life are one system of 
positive error, reaching with fatal consistency from the cradle to 
the grave. curvoB in terras animas • et celestium inanes ! what 
will be the termination of this irreligious disorder, and to what 
this abase of our reason will conduct us, I know not : but, it is 
impossible not to remember that according to the word of God 
the extinction of all faith is one indication of the approaching 
close of this terrestrial world. 

Having thus lamented our fallen state, I turned my thoughts 
upon the various protestant societies, and comparing their belief 
with the belief of the first ages, I was seized with astonishment 
and pity. Is it possible, have I a thousand times exclaimed, 
that men should announce to the world a religious reformation 
with the plausible and alluring promise of restoring the primitive 
faith and fervor, whilst at the same time, they commence the 
work, by erasing from the catalogue of faith that which the 
primitive ages believed and practised as most holy and sublime ! 
for, most assuredly, the liturgies written in the fifth century 
present us with those essential prayers, which the bishops and 
priests of preceding ages repeated from memory at the altar. 
Some trifling variations in the expressions, in the arrangement 
of the prayers, and in the disposition of the rites and ceremonies, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 293 

clearly shew that they were not written by the apostles : but the 
complete and universal agreement of the liturgies pointing out 
to us, through the whole Christian world, the oblation, the victim, 
the unbloody sacrifice, the invocation for effecting the change of 
substance, the adoration which follows it together with the real 
presence, &c. can proceed but from one and the same cause, a 
cause equally imperative and obligatory upon all, in short, from 
one and the same apostolical institution. Indeed, if the apostles 
had not taught by their word and example that these dogmas 
should be expressed in the celebration of the sacred mysteries, 
how comes it that they are found in all the liturgies as soon as 
they appear ? Let the advocates of a figurative presence and of 
a real absence tell us, if they can, at what time and in what 
manner mankind could have passed from a belief so simple as 
theirs, and which, according to theni, had been taught by the 
apostles and their disciples in all nations, to a perfectly contrary 
belief, to inconceivable dogmas, which had been hitherto unheard 
of. and which suddenly plunged the world into a new abominable 
idolatry. By what means and at what precise time could this 
prodigious change take place ? Would it be at the time when 
the liturgies were committed to writing ? or would it be before 
that time V But they were not written all at once : there was no 
general order given for bringing them to light ; there was not, 
neither could there have been, any agreement or understanding 
amongst those who compiled them. A thousand clamors would 
have been raised against the unfaithful authors of a first liturgy ; 
a thousand reclamations would have echoed from every side 
against interpolations so serious and notorious. If we call to 
mind the zeal of St. Cyprian against those who did not mix water 
in the chalice, we shall be able to judge of the reclamations that 
would have been raised against more essential innovations at a 
time when, as St. Jerome said, the blood of Jesus Christ was 
.still smoking, and the newly enkindled faith was burning in the 

li .aits of the faithful. It would have been the duty of every 
bishop and priest loudly to condemn an attempt of such a nature; 
silence, in such circumstances, would have been a crime. Every 



294 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

patriarch and metropolitan would have published the ancient 
liturgy of his Church to stifle these revolting novelties in their 
birth ; and we should have possessed at this day a multitude of 
contrary liturgies. It cannot be doubted that the Fathers of 
Ephesus and Chalcedon would have proclaimed the legitimate 
tradition, have suppressed the authority of the false liturgies, 
and confirmed those that were authentic and true. 

We shall be obliged therefore to suppose that the change must 
have taken place before the publication of the liturgies. But, 
name what Church you please, it is impossible to conceive that 
such a change could have been effected during the interval be- 
tween the time of the apostles and the commitment of the litur- 
gies to writing. We will, if you please, take an example the 
Church of Alexandria. About the year 328, we find Frumen- 
tius leaving that city and carrying with him a copy of the litur- 
gy for the purpose of celebrating it in the centre of Abyssinia. 
This copy, transcribed by the order and under the inspection of 
Athanasius, must have been revised by him and found confor- 
mable to that which was in use in his Church, to that which 
numerous venerable priests of his clergy had constantly recited 
at the altar for fifty or sixty years, and which they had learned 
from their predecessors the most advanced in years ; already we 
find that the very first links of this chain bring us to the times 
of St. Clement, who died in this Church about the year 215, 
and St. Clement assures us that in his time there were still sur- 
viving some of those, who had immediately succeeded the 
apostles. Where are we to place this anti-apostolical change 
in a chain so closely and sacredly connected, and so near to the 
first origin of Christianity ? The same observation would apply 
to the Church of Jerusalem, of which the second bishop, Simeon, 
was 120 years old when crowned with martyrdom, and the lit- 
urgy of which was explained by St. Cyril to his neophytes about 
tho middle of the fourth age ; and likewise to the Church of 
Lyons, where St. Irenaeus, the disciple of St. Polycarp, sealed 
tho faith with his blood in 204, &c. Now if a change of this 
nature could not have been effected in any given Church, how 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 295 

are we to conceive it possible in them all ? How are we to ima- 
gine, that, in times so pure and so devoted to the doctrine of the 
apostles, men could ever have come to an understanding to change 
and to corrupt that doctrine ; that they could, for the adopting 
of an unheard of faith and novel practices, have concerted to- 
gether, in Italy, in Gaul and in Spain, in Syria and in the 
kingdoms of Asia? But this is not all : how are we to imagine 
that the Nestorians, who appeared at the precise time when the 
liturgies were first published, would have borrowed them from 
the Church which condemned their heresy, instead of retaliating 
upon her by reclamations which they might reasonably have 
made, and which their interests would not have allowed them to 
forego ? How are we to conceive again, that the partisans of 
Eutyches would have followed the same conduct, and that the 
numerous enemies of the council of Chalcedon — the Jacobites, 
Copts or Syrians — would have taken pride in celebrating the 
catholic liturgies, notwithstanding so many essential and manifest 
interpolations ? This supposition is full of every thing so contrary 
to the laws that rule the heart of man, that it would be loss of 
time to dwell any longer on the subject. As it cannot with any 
flbew of reason be contradicted, nothing remains but frankly and 
honorably to acknowledge, that the unanimity, and uniform 
agreement of all the Christians of the fifth age, without even a 
trace of the most trifling reclamation, clearly prove that the lit- 
urgies of that period must faithfully express the belief and practice 
of the first ages. 1 

These ancient liturgies you have just been reading — in them 
you have every where discovered the altar, the oblation, the im- 

1 ' [ add, to w hit hath been already observed the consent of all the Christian 
Churches in tli" world, however distant from each other, in the prayer of oblation 
of the Christiana taerifieej in the holy Eucharist or sacrament of the Lord's 
Sapper; which consent is indeed wonderful. Ail the ancient witnesses agree in 
thi- form of prayer, almost in the same words, but fully and exactly in the same 
sense, order ami method; which, whosoever attentively considers, must be con- 
vinced, thai this order of prayer wasdelivered to the several Churches in the 
very first plantation and settlement of them.' Bishop null's ' Some important 
Points of Primitive Christianity maintained and defended.' London. 171 1, 2nd 
Bdit Vol. II. Sunn. xiii. p. 563. 



296 ox the nnRcii of England 

nidation of the victim and the unbloody sacrifice : every where 
have you found the invocation for affecting the change of sub- 
stance, which, on the one hand, supposes the real presence, and, 
on the other, commands our adoration. From north to south, 
from east to west you have heard words expressing these dogmas 
proceed from the mouth of the priests and bishops, even, if I 
mistake not, with more energy and spirit in the oriental Churches 
than in the Roman Church. You have beheld all the Christians 
of the world approaching the altar with faith, fear and adoration. 
Such therefore was incontestably the belief of the world, united 
with the general and almost daily practice of this golden age of 
Christianity. The liturgies ' of every thing that bore the 
Christian name to the 5th century and of every thing that still 
bears it, excepting only yourselves, trace them in characters so 
bold and legible that I cannot conceive how any man of sense, 
who is solicitous for his salvation, after having once read them, 
should not immediately abandon every communion, in which 
these dogmas are rejected, that he might unite himself to the 
faith of the primitive Church, become associated to her sacred 
liturgy, and join with her in adoring Jesus Christ present under 
the sacred species in the august and adorable mystery of the 
Eucharist. 

1 There is not one of these ancient liturgies which, together with the oblation 
and sacrifice, does not also mark out, and often in the same phrase, the change of 
substance and the adoration. Bishop Bull must have been aware of this : yet he 
passes it over in silence. From the uniformity of the liturgies, he infers with 
good reason the apostolic doctrine of the oblation and sacrifice : but he refrains 
from drawing the same inference respecting the change of substance and the 
adoration ! He loudly proclaims the apostolicity of the former, while he conceals 
that of the latter ! What ties his tongue and checks his manly progress towards 
truth ! Deplorable weakness of human nature ! The acknowledgment of the 
v. hole truth would have exposed him to sacrifices, which he had not the courage 
to make. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 29*7 



APPENDIX. 



Particular Belief of the Principal Churches respecting the 
Apostolicity Churches of their Liturgies. 



It will be but just and proper to commence by the eminent and primitive 
Church, in which all the others unite as in their centre. See, then, in what 
manner the Sovereign Pontiffs have spoken of their Liturgy: 'Who does not 
know that what has been left to the Church of Rome by Peter, and is practised 
to the present day, ought to be observed by all : that no one can add to it, or in- 
troduce any thing into it without authority, or from any other source: it being 
manifest abo«e all things that, throughout all Italy, in Gaul, Spain, Africa and 
Sicily, no Church has ever been established, but by those, to whom the vener- 
able apostle Peter or his successors had confided the priestly administration of 
it V* 

('■ -la-in-, who occupied the holy see from 402 to 496, has left us a sacramentary 
bearing his name, which i-- the most ancient of any that have come to us in the 
Roman Liturgy. He has arranged the prayers handed down to him by tradition, 

and has also introduced - prayers and prefaces of his own. Following the 

opinion of the learned, we must consider the sacramentary of Gelasius as a col- 
lection of what was read at mass in the Church of Rome from the time of the 
Apostles, and of some few additional prayers, which this saint thought adviseable 
to introduce. 

From Rome the Churches of Spain received the Liturgy, as we learn from 
Innocent I. just quoted, and also according to the tradition among the Spaniards, 
of which Isidore, the celebrated and learned bishop of Seville, assures us in the 
following most positive terms: 'The order of the mass, together with the prayers 
by which the gifts offered to God arc consecrated, was first instituted by St. 
Peter.'"t We may add, thai be did it al the instigation of St. Paul; for St. 
dement, BuccesBor of St. Peter, says Labis letters to the Corinthians, that the 
apostle, after having instructed the Bast, announced the Gospel to the extremities 
of the West, which will apply to Spain. We know, further, fi St. Paul him- 
self, that he projected this apostolic course. 'When I shall begin to take my 
journey Into Spain,' mote he to the Romans,:*, ' 1 hope that as I .-hall pas-, I 

• Innocent I. to Deccntius, an. 'IIS. t On the Church o/lice, U. I. ch. xv. an. 601. 
JCh. xv. v. 24 and U8. 



2 'J 8 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

shall see you,' And a little afterwards : 'I will come by you into Spain.' It ap- 
pears also that after this voyage St. Peter and St. Paul sent from Rome seven 
bishops into Spain, who extended the faith in that vast idolatrous country, and 
there also a saled it with their blood, after having founded many Chuches as es- 
tablished th'j public worship and divine service according to the liturgy of St. 
Peter.* 

Pope Vigilius t sent the order of the Roman mass to Profatauus, bishop of 
Erague, that he might see how it was drawn up. The council of Prague in 5C3 
adopted it for all Spain. Now, in the letter of Pope Vigilius, the canon is called 
by excellence the canonical prayer : we there learn that it comes down tradition- 
ally from the apostles, quern ex tradilione apoitolica guscessimus ; that it was 
straight forward in every mass and that there were not different canons for differ- 
ent feasts, seii semper eodem tenore oblata Deo munera consecramus : that there 
were merely some additions made on certain solemn festivals by way of com- 
memorating them. This testimony confirms what has been already mentioned, 
that, according to the Roman tradition, the canon, that is, the essential part of 
the liturgy, came from the apostles. 

The liturgy, that Pepin and Charlemagne caused to be put aside for the Roman 
rite, was undoubtedly brought from the East into Gaul. We come to this deci- 
sion from its close resemblance to the oriental liturgies. It appears that St. Paul, 
on his way from Rome to Spain, passed through Gaul and left bishops there, 
Crescentius at Vienne, Paul at Narbonne, Trophimus in Aries. Pothinus, first 
bishop of Lyons, where he suffered martyrdom when upwards of ninety, was a 
disciple of St. Polycarp : Iremeus, his successor, came also from Smyrna, where he 
had been brought up by the same apostolic man. The letter of the Churches of 
Yienne and Lyons to those of Asia and Phrvgia clearly shews the relation exist- 
ing between Christian Gaul and the East. This should suffice to shew the origin 
of the Graliic liturgy and its apostolical institution, because it was indubitably 
practised and taught by its first bishops. It is indeed probable that the apostles 
of Gaul went to Rome, and there received authority from St. Peter or his succes- 
sors. But this sanction of the Holy See did not prevent them from forming the 
liturgy according to the usage of the Eastern Churches, to which the Church of 
Rome made no resistance, since their liturgies differed in nothing essential from 
her own. We know that when St. Polycarp was at Rome, Pope Anicetus allowed 
him the honor of celebrating the sacred mysteries in his Church. 

Hilduin, abbe of St. Denis, in his preface on the Areopagitics, addressed to 
Louis le Debonnaire shortly after the death of Charlemagne in 814, speaks of 
some missals of the highest antiquity, and ' almost consumed with age, which 
contained the order of the mass according to the Gallican rite, such as was re- 
ceived with the faith of this western country, and always used, until the Roman 
rite, now in use, was adopted.' They were, therefore, persuaded that the Gallic 
liturgy was as ancient as the faith, and that both were derived from the same 
source — the apostles and apostolic men. 

The Greek and Syriac liturgy of Jerusalem is incontestably traced to St. James, 
first bishop of that first Church, where the apostles celebrated the mysteries to- 

* Letter of Pope Gregory VII. to the kings Sancho and Alplionsus. \ Vigilius, 
elected pope in 538. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 299 

gether before their dispersion, and where St. James continued to celebrate them 
during the remainder of his episcopacy. The fathers of the general council in 
Irollo, in 692, cited it as coming certainly from the same apostle, and made use 
of it to refute the error of the Armenians, who at that time merely put wine in 
the chalice without water-. It will be readily perceived how it may indifferently 
be called the liturgy of St. James or of Jerusalem. The Greeks and the Syrians 
of that town and the neighboring countries have always regarded it as transmitted 
by St. James. They wrote it at first in Greek for their use, because that lan- 
guage was generally spoken in the great towns of the East in the fourth and fifth 
centuries, at which periods the liturgies began to be committed to writing. In 
the Greek it bears the name of St. James, as well as in the Syriac version after- 
wards made from it. 

Firmilian, when at Jerusalem towards the commencement of the third century, 
observed some difference between the office there celebrated and the Roman 
office, lie observes * to St. Cyprian that the ceremonies at Jerusalem are ex- 
actly the same as those at Rome. He merely takes notice of the difference in the 
ceremonies ; which supposes that in essentials he discovered no difference 
whatever. 

In the judgment of skilful critics, the liturgy which St. Cyril of Jerusalem 
explained to the newly baptized is exactly the same as that known under the 
name of St. James. We see nevertheless that since the apostles' time and even 
since the time of St. Cyril, it has undergone some change in the ceremonies and 
in the collects or prayers, some being lengthened and others shortened : a change 
very common to books in common use, and which circumstances failed not to 
occasion, even after they had been committed to writing. It is also very manifest, 
that, not having been, like the other liturgies, written till the fifth century, there 
WOB added to the name of Jesus Christ the word consubstanticd, and to that of 
the Blessed Virgin the title of .Mother of God, defined at Ephesus. This proves, 
indeed, that it was not written before these general councils, since it was not 
cited by them as a proof; but it would hardly be the part of a judicious critic to 
conclude from this circumstance, that it did not exist before these additions, 
which were commanded by posterior decrees of the Church. 

For more than eleven centuries has the Church of Constantinople made use of 
two liturgies, one under the name of St. John Chrysostom, the other under that 
of St. Basil. Neither one nor other of these two bishops was the author of these 
liturgies. The eloquent patriarch did not receive the glorious title of Chrysostom, 
till three centuries after bis death. Before him, in his time, and long afterwards, 
the liturgy, which has since gone by his name, bore the name of the apostles. 
For the purpose of distinguishing it from so many others equally coming from 
the apostles, and to follow the custom which bad been introduced in other parts, 
thej gave it without doubt the name of this great patriarch. At the conclusion 
of the sixth century it bad uol as yel received his name. Our voucher for this 
i.. Leontius, a lawyer of Byzantium, who reproaches Restoring in the following 

■train \ ' Another 01 i yet, which _\ ields in do respect to the preceding one : be 

had the audacity, without regard to the Liturgj of the apostles and to that of St. 
Basil, (i 1 in 'ii in the Bame spirit, to model a new form of mass different from that 

•Kpisl. LXXV. 



300 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

which our fathers had transmitted to the Churches. In this his new mass he 
covered the mysteries of the Eucharist with blasphemies rather than with 
prayers.'* 

As to St. Basil, we know from St. Gregory Nazianzen, that he had composed 
prayers for the altar: and St. Basil himself, in his letter to the clergy of Neoce- 
Barea, speaks of those which he had made for the mass: he had intended them 
for his monastery : they accorded with those which were said in the Churches, 
merely with the addition of certain prayers to the canon without changing or re- 
moving any part of it : they were much admired in the East : various Churches 
accommodated them to the order of their liturgies, each after its own manner. 

The Church of Alexandria was founded by St. Mark; we cannot doubt that 
this evangelist gave to his Church the order of the liturgy, which was followed 
by his successors and by the bishops under their jurisdiction. Cyril, who lived 
till 444. was occupier of the patriarchal see about the time when the liturgies 
were committed to writing, that is, about the council of Ephesus, in 431. It was 
at first written in Greek, which was spoken in Alexandria, in Coptic for the 
provinces, then, in the seventh age in Arabic, after the conquest of Egypt by 
Mahomet. Cyril had, after the example of many saints, composed prayers for 
the altar : | the splendor he had thrown upon the Church caused his name to be 
put to the liturgy which was written, but this did not destroy the remembrance 
of its first apostolical origin. The ancient Coptic authors declare that the liturgy 
of St. Mark was augmented by Cyril, liiurgia Marci quam per/) fit CyriUus. 

Frumentius and one of his cousins, both very young, were led into Ethiopia 
by a merchant of their parents, who had also entrusted to him the education of 
their children. The barbarians having massacred the merchant and his crew, 
found the two children studying under a tree, and preparing their lessons : they 
were moved with compassion and led them to the king, who, charmed with their 
appearance and compassionating their situation, kindly took them into his pro- 
tection, and eventually made Frumentius his treasurer and secretary of state, 
and the other his cup-bearer. The king dying some years afterwards, Frumentius 
divided the affairs of the regency with the queen dowager, during the minority 
of her son. He employed his credit and influence in favor of the Christian 
merchants who landed on those coasts. Obtaining, at last, from the young king 
permission to return with his relation to Tyre, his native country, he passed 
through Alexandria.^ of which Athanasius had just been elected the patriarch, 
made known to him the state of the Christians in Ethiopia, and the happy dispo- 
sitions manifested by the barbarians towards Christianity, and besought him to 
Bend them a bishop. Athanasius, after duly considering the matter, decided upon 
sending them Frumentius himself. From being a laic, he was accordingly made 
bishop of all that country, where his preaching was crowned with wonderful 
success. || 

Who can doubt that, upon dismissing him for a distant country, Athanasius 
would provide him with what was necessary for the ministry and public worship, 
such as a copy of the Scriptures and of the liturgy, to supply the defect of his 
memory, till then unpractised in the administration of the sacraments, and that 

"Leontius agninst Nestorius and Eutyohes. \ Cat. de liturg. orient, t. I. 171. 
Reaaudot. t. I. p. 94. % In 326. || Rufinus, Hist. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 301 

after his death, leaving it to his Church, his successor might find it written at 
length ? What very much strengthens this more than probable conjecture is, 
that M. de Ludolf has by his translation made us acquainted with an Ethiopian 
liturgy, in which there is mention made of 318 fathers of Nice only, to whom 
Athanasins was so much devoted. 

Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, condemned and deposed in the general 
council of Epheerns in 431, for teaching that there were two persons in Christ, 
and consequently denying the union of the Word with the human nature, and 
the divine maternity of the B. Virgin, found many adherents in Syria, where 
th •-■■• notions had long been in embryo, since Paul of Samosata. The Nestorians 
carried their errors with Christianity into the kingdoms of the Assyrians and 
Persians, from thence into the Indies, and even in the seventh age, as far as China, 
at Bas been discovered from an inscription found in 1G25 in the town of Sigani-Fu, 
capital <>f the province of Xinsi, which inscription has been considered as au- 
thentic by the most learned antiquaries. It was engraved on a stone of twent}'- 
nine columns, in Chinese characters with some Syriac lines, and dated the year 
of the era of the Greeks or Sileucidae, 1092. which corresponds with the year 7S0 
or 781 of our era. From it we learn that the Gospel was preached in China by 
priests who came from Syria in the year 936. You may consult on this singu- 
larly curious monument father Kireher, in his China lUustrata, and the liturgies 
of l'ere Lebrun, t. iii. p. 374. 

Now, the Nestorians have three liturgies, written in the Syriac language, the 
first entitled of the apostles, the second of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the third of 
the Nestorians. The learned abbe Renaudot who has translated them, observes 
that the first is the ancient liturgy of the Churches of Syria before Nestorius: 
the second was to be the liturgy of the Church of Mopsuestia, in Cilicia, of which 
Theodore, the friend and master of Nestorius, was bishop: the third was to bo 
the liturgy of Constantinople, which Nestorius had followed in it, but into which 
he insinuated his errors. The analogy and conformity of the words of institution 
en the liturgy of Constantinople and that of the Nestorians sufficiently 
I hat they were originally the same. We do not discover the error of the 
Nestorians in the two former. 

According to the tradition of Lesser Armenia, the faith was announced to their 
ancestors by S3. Thadeus and Bartholomew. We know that at the commence- 
ment of the third century there was found there a great number of Christians: 
the attachment of the Armenians t > their religion determined the emperor Max- 
iininuH, who renewed the persecution in 235, to declare war upon them, although 
tiny were friendly to the Etonians, in the following persecutions of Locius and 
Diocletian they had many martyrs. 

i . iter Armenia was converted at the commencement of the fourth age by St 
Gregory the Illuminator, himself an Armenian, educated al Caesarea and ordained 

in li ip by I. it Iii—, who assisted at the council of Nice, and was succeeded in 

In- - •■ by St. Basil. 'Shall the Church no longer exist in tin' two Armenias, 

are not there?' said Optatus of Milevum to the Donatists. And 

Rufiuus, the translator of Eusebius, after relating what we have -aid of Maxiini- 

Ida in a perentb v&rety devoted in religion, St. 

Badil continued, after tin' example of his predecessor, to extend his Bolicitude to 

20 



302 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

these countries, and to send them bishops. St. Chrysostom was sent thither into 
exile, and there finished his holy and glorious career. 

It was therefore from Caesarea that Greater Armenia received its liturgies, and 
also the beautiful prayers which St. Basil had composed. It added some prayers 
of St. Athanasius, and of St. Chrysostom, whose memory it held in honor. It 
wrote its liturgy like the other Churches, about the middle of the fifth age, and 
followed it in its primitive purity till the middle of the sixth: but then it per- 
mitted itself to be led into schism and hatred against the council of Chalcedon 
rather than into the error of Eutyches, by James the Syrian, bishop of Edessa.* 
The Armenians inserted in their liturgy the Eutychean addition, u-ho wan crucified, 
&c, to the trisagion or thrice holy, as Nicephorus relates. This reproach, and 
that of not mixing water in the chalice, are the only ones ever made by the Church 
to their liturgy, which incontestably had its origin before the schism, and must 
have been brought to them by their apostle Gregory. 

* Photius' Letter to the Patriarch of the Armenians. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 303 

LETTER X. 

A recapitulation upon the Eucharist. 

We have seen that the secrecy so religiously observed through- 
out the whole Church on the subject of the Eucharist during the 
first ages, could have been intended to conceal neither more nor 
less than the real presence. We have seen that, in the celebra- 
tion of the sacred mysteries, the bishops and priests of these 
same ages, recited set forms of invocation and prayers, in which 
we find the clearest and most energetic terms employed to ex- 
press the real presence, the change of the substance, the adora- 
tion, and the oblation of the victim, or the unbloody sacrifice of 
the new law. And after this what necessity can there be of 
entering upon a more minute and particular examination as to 
what these same bishops and fathers may have written in the 
works they have left behind them? You will easily conceive 
that they could never have taught a doctrine directly opposed to 
that which they were guarding with so much circumspection • 
and that, while day by day they continued, in the public liturgy, 
to call down the Holy Spirit, to effect the change of the bread 
and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, they could 
not, in common consistency, have maintained in their writings, 
that no change whatever of substance was effected in the bread 
and wine. It is hardly to be supposed that in their temples and 
religious assemblies, they should have presented to the adoration 
of the faithful and themselves have adored the body and blood 
of Jesus Christ, and, at the same time, should have advanced 
in their writings that divine worship could nut be paid to the 
consecrated elements, without idolatry, Beeing thai these crea- 
tures were but the figure and the memorial of Jesus Christ, ab- 
sent and in heaven. Equally objectionable would be the suppo- 
sition that they Bhould in their writings have pronounced the new 
law to be without a sacrifice, while they themselves were daily 



304 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

offering a sacrifice to God upon their altars. Produce the most 
obstinate and inveterate Zuinglian and let me but once persuade 
him that the discipline of secrecy had undoubtedly the dogma of 
the real presence for its cause and object, or let him be com- 
pelled to admit that the change of the substance, the adoration, 
the unbloody sacrifice, proclaimed in all the liturgies of the fifth 
century, are necessarily of apostolic origin, and I will defy him 
to do otherwise than conclude, that, whatever the fathers have 
said upon the Eucharist, must absolutely be referred unto it. 
And now, Sir, I flatter myself, you clearly perceive, that the 
occult discipline relative to the Eucharist was actually indebted 
to the doctrine of the real presence, and to nothing else, for its 
existence ; I also flatter myself that you will no longer entertain 
a shadow of doubt as to the apostolic origin of these dogmas, 
uniformly expressed in all the liturgies written in the fifth cen- 
tury. You ought, thei-efore, to feel well convinced, without 
further enquiry, that the passages of the fathers upon the Eu- 
charist, can neither be understood nor explained in a sense con- 
trary to the doctrine they were secretly preserving, a doctrine 
they so strongly expressed in the private celebration of their 
liturgies. Not, however, that I would deter you from examin- 
ing these passages. It shall be my pleasure now, immediately, 
to assist you in so doing. For, in a matter of such moment, 
there cannot be too great an accumulation of proofs. 

From the occult discipline we learn that the mysteries of re- 
ligion were studiously veiled in obscure and enigmatical ex- 
pressions, whenever there was danger of their dignity being 
compromised before the non-initiated ; and that, on the con- 
trary, when no such danger existed, they were discussed with- 
out disguise. From it also, we are taught, that the same pre- 
caution and reservedness that attended the bishops in their pub- 
lic instructions, never left them in their writings. "How should 
it be proper," says St. Basil, "to divulge abroad to the public 
at large in writing, what is not lawful to expose to the eye of 
the uninitiated*! " 

Now, to mark out the precise circumstances in which there 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 305 

did or did not exist danger of the mysteries being compromised 
in instructions or writings, would, at this distance of time, be a 
venturesome undertaking. The fathers alone were able to judge 
of the freedom with which they could safely communicate their 
sentiments, and they alone could calculate the probable danger 
resulting therefrom. We, for instance, should never have sup- 
posed that any risk could be run in writing to a bishop ; and yet 
we find that Innocent I. at the commencement of the fifth cen- 
tury, dares not speak openly of the mysteries to Decentius. It 
might never have entered our thoughts, that a Christian of the 
second age could have opened himself with confidence to a Pa- 
gan Emperor : and yet Justin made no difficulty in admitting 
Antoninus into many secrets of the sanctuary. 

We know, however, to a certainty, that the fathers, in their 
discourses before the catechumens and unbelievers and in com- 
posing the works destined for the public eye, were obliged to 
be upon their guard and to proceed with wariness and reserve, 
as they themselves very frequently testify; because, in a general 
way, they found themselves in these embarrassing circumstances. 
We know, also, to a certainty, that they must have developed 
this doctrine in its entire and naked form, when speaking or 
wiiting for the instruction of the newly-baptized. For, on 
these occasions, their object was to initiate them thoroughly in 
the mysteries of which they were to be partakers ; and it be- 
came necessary to explain the nature of the sacrament and give 
every other essential information respecting it, that their igno- 
rance might not expose them to profanation or sacrilege. 1 Whence 

1 "On the eve of the great paschal solemnity, and of our regeneration," says 
Cyril of Jerusalem, * •• we shall give yon the uecessary and suitable instruction; 
with what reverence and in what order you must enter the baptistery; what are 
tin' reasons for the sacred ceremonies there made use of; with wbal devotion you 
must, (in coming forth from baptism, approa< b the altar of God, and participate 
in the spiritual and celestial mysteries there offered: in order thai), having your 
souls enlightened by our instructions and exhortations, yon may each of you com- 
prebend the greatness of the gifl - conferred upon you l>y the Almighty." 

" Of all the things," says St. Qaudentius, t '* thai are pointed out to us in the 

*Oatech. is. t Explanation nf Exodus to the Neophytes. 

2G* 



306 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

it follows, that if we would form a correct judgment of the 
opinion held by the fathers upon the Eucharist, we must inves- 
tigate writings of the second kind, and not those of the first. 
Good sense requires that, for the discovery of the real senti- 
ments of an author, recourse should be had to the writings in 
which he must have clearly expressed them, and not to those in 
which he was under the necessity of concealing them in vague- 
ness, obscurity, and ambiguity of language. 

There is no doubt that, in those glorious ages, every bishop 
was most zealous in instructing the neophytes of his Church, and 
that between the baptismal font and the sacred table, he detained 
them for some time, for the purpose of disclosing to them what 
had hitherto been concealed ; and instructing them in the sub- 
lime theology of the sacrament, they were about to have the 
happiness of receiving. There is no doubt that, if some of 
these holy prelates trusted on these occasions to the ideas sug- 
gested at the moment by their piety and learning, still many 
must have preferred committing their thoughts to writing, that 
their instructions might be more connected, methodical and clear, 
for the assistance also of their memory, and to spare themselves 
the time and trouble of two annual preparations for the work, 
during their episcopacy. Not that such instructions, replete 
with the mysterious doctrine, were written for the purpose of be- 

book of Exodus, in describing the celebration of the pasch, we shall at present 
speak only of those, which cannot be explained before the catechumens , Bui which 

notwithstanding it is necessary to disclose to the newly baptised This splendid 

tight (of Easter) requires our instruction to be adapted rather to the circum- 
stances of the time, than to the lesson of the day, in order that the neophytes 
may,/or the first time, he, taught in what manner we partake of the paschal 
sacrifice.. *. 

" You not only see the same body that was seen by the magi," says St. Chry- 
sostoni; + " but you are acquainted with its virtue, you know how it communi- 
cates itself, and you are ignorant of nothing that it has effected, having been 
carefully instructed in all these particular* at the time of your initiation." 

" In the paschal solemnity," says St. Augustine, $ " the first seven or eight 
days are appointed for the instruction of the children (the newly-baptised) upon 
the sacraments." 

* Treati-e v. t Horn. XXV. on the I. Ed. to Corinth. $ Discourses 238 delivered 
on the fifth day of the paschal solemnity. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 307 

coming public. The case was far otherwise, most assuredly. 
You may conceive with what vigilant anxiety the prelate must 
have guarded his invaluable treasure from the eye of the sus- 
pected or the stranger, and with what difficulty even his friends 
could extort a communication of his labor, or a copy of the essay 
from his wary and fearful circumspection. 1 One single elemen- 
tary and dogmatical instruction of this nature would bring us 
more acquainted with the primitive belief respecting the Eucha- 
rist, than would a thousand mutilated passages, extracted from 
the writings that were made public by the fathers, and in which, 
of course, an apprehension of revealing the mysteries drove them 
to a studied reserve and obscurity of style. 

If it be true, as there is every reason to suppose, that the 
generality of the bishops, during the four first ages, actually 
composed detailed instructions upon the dogmas of the Eucharist 
we can only regret that the far greater number of these are lost. 
It has pleased providence, however, that some of these authentic 
and incontestable records of primitive faith should be transmitted 
to us. In them we must interrogate antiquity, whose voice may 
still be heard, and by whom we ourselves may be instructed in 
the discourses addressed to the neophytes, and which, of their 
nature plainly decide the matter for or against, between us and 
the protestants. Whatever was the belief at that time, whether 
protestant or Catholic, must there be found clearly delivered. 
Fur it was ii' cessary to inform the neophytes what they were go- 
in g to receive ; whether it was really the body and blood of Jesus 
Christ, "i- merely a little bread and wine, as a figure and repre- 
Bentation, and nothing more: whether the substance of the body 
took tin- place of the Bubstance of the bread, and consequently 
required the adoration of the faithful ; or, wheather the bread and 
v ine, still preserving their own nature, became simply a memo- 
rid of Jesus Chrisl absent, and called, of course, for no other 
i, or reverence than wh.it might be due to any other reli- 

1 I would Ii !TB recommend tlic re-jierusal of the observations prefixed bv St. 
Cyril of Jerusalem, to his fiitrrltrtiwii fiwiruciiujw. I have quoted it in the ap- 
. of Secrecy. 



308 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

gious ceremony. Again, one or other of the two contradictory 
tenets must be expressed in positive terms, in these dogmatical 
and elementary instructions. Your own theologians, no less than 
ourselves, have them in their hands; but, I suspect, you will 
never have found them much inclined to bring you acquainted 
with such documents. Ask them to communicate these doc- 
uments to you, together with their sentiments respecting 
them. You will soon find that they take your request with no 
very good grace : and in truth, to deal plainly with you, it is 
impossible that they should. Well ! Sir, I will spare them their 
embarrassment: and so far as you are concerned, I will go on to 
accomplish their defective ministrations. Now, therefore, 
imagine yourself among the ancient neophytes of Jerusalem ; 
and that you, as well as they, are about to be addressed by the 
venerable patriarch Cyril, 1 on the sacrament you have hitherto 
known little about, in language and instructions as follows : 
' ' The doctrine of blessed Paul is alone sufficient to give certain 
proofs of the truth of the divine mysteries." He quotes the 
passage from St. Paul to the Corinthians, and thus proceeds : 
"As then, Jesus Christ, speaking of the bread, declared and 
said, this is my body, who shall ever dare to call his word in 
question ? And as, speaking of the wine, he positively assured 
us and said, this is my blood, who shall doubt it and say, that it 
is not his blood? Once, in Cana of Galilee, he changed water 
into wine by his will alone ; and shall we think it less worthy of 
credit, that he changed wine into his blood ? Invited to an 
earthly marriage, he wrought this miracle ; and shall we hesitate 
to confess that he has given to his children his body to eat, and 
his blood to drink. Wherefore, with all confidence, let us take 
the body and blood of Christ. For under the type or figure of 
bread, his body is given to them, and under the figure of wine, 
his blood is given, that so being made partakers of the body and 
blood of Christ, you may become one body and one blood with 
him Wherefore 1 conjure you, my brethern, not to 

1 Ann. 350. Catech. myst. IV. u. 1, 2, 3, pp. 292, 293, 291. passim, ed. Oxonii 
1703. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 309 

consider them any more as common bread and wine, since they 
are the body and blood of Jesus Christ, according to his words : 
and although your sense might suggest that to you, let faith con- 
firm you. Judge not of the thing by your taste, but by faith 
assure yourself, without the least doubt, that you are honored 
with the body and blood of Christ. This knowing, and of this 
being assured, that what appears to you bread, is not bread, but 
the body of Christ, although the taste judges it to be bread ; 
and that the wine which you see, and which has the taste of 
wine, is not wine, but the blood of Christ." 

St. Gregory of Nazianzum, 1 addressing the faithful and neo- 
phytes, says: " Waver not in spirit, when you hear speak of 
the blood, passion, and death of God; but rather eat the body 
and drink the blood without any hesitation, if you would live. 
Ni " /• doubt of what you hear said respecting his flesh, and be 
not scandalized at his passion : be firm and constant, and in no 
wise shaken by the language of our adversaries." 

St. Gregory, of Nyssa, 2 speaking of the newly -baptised, says: 
"Man being composed of two parts, the body and the soul, 
united and mixed up together, it necessarily follows that those 
who are to be saved communicate in each of these parts with him 
who conducts to life, that is, with Jesus Christ. Thus the soul, 
becoming united to him by faith, arrives at salvation by that 
way: for what is united to life participates no doubt of life. 
lhit the body also must find another life by commingling itself 
with him who is to save it. For as they, who would counteract 
the effect of poison in their body, must have recourse to an an- 
tidote thai may diffuse its healing virtue through every part of 
the body to which the poison had penetrated; so, in like manner, 
after taking the fatal poison of sin, which is destructive of our 
nature, it becomes indispensably necessary for us to employ a 
remedy thai may restore what is decayed and disordered, and on 
operating as a powerful antidote within us, may dispel, by its 
contrary quality, the malignant effects of the poison we had re- 

' Born 827 \ 'ii'-<i 889. Swo,,<t Discourse oa the paach. '-' An 3G9. Orat. Catcch. 
c. XXXVII. T. II. p. 534, Ac, Ed. Pari . L815. 



310 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

eeived. But what is this medicine? That body which was 
Bh \vn to be more powerful than death, and was the beginning 
of our life ; and which could not otherwise enter our bodies than 
by eating and drinking.. The body of Christ, by the in- 
habitation of the word of God, was transmuted into a divine dig- 
nity; and so I now believe, that the bread, sanctified by the 
Wbrd of God, is transmuted into the body of Christ." One 
might suppose, that St. Gregory of Nyssa, had in his eye, and 
was refuting before hand, the sacramentarians who were after- 
wards to tell the world, that the body of Christ was to be eaten 
by faith alone. This great bishop teaches, in opposition to 
them, that as man is composed of two substances, so he is in two 
different ways united to God; the one adapted to the nature of 
the soul by faith : the other conformable to the nature of his 
body, by the real manducation of the body of Christ made pre- 
sent in the Eucharist by a change of substance. 

I now request your attention to the discourse delivered by St. 
Ambrose l to his neophytes : "I entreat you, who are soon to 
become partakers of the sacred mysteries, seriously to consider, 
which is the most excellent, the nourishment given by God to 
the Israelites in the desert, and called the bread of angels, or 
the flesh of Jesus Christ, which is the very body of him who is 
life itself, the manna which fell from heaven, or that which is 

above the heavens Water flowed from out of a rock in 

favor of the Jews, but for you, it is blood that flows from Christ 

himself. Thus this meat and drink of the old law, were 

but figures and shadows : but here we speak of the truth and the 
validity. And if the shadow so much excited your admiration, 
how truly noble must be the substance. For light is preferable 
to the shadow : truth to the figure : the body of Christ to the 
manna of heaven. But you may say, I see somewhat else ; how 
do you assert that I shall receive the body of Christ? — this re- 
mains to be proved. How many examples may we not make use 
of to shew, that we have not here what nature formed, but what 

• Dee Initiandls, c. IX. T. IV. p. 350, 351. Paris, 1614. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 311 

the divine blessing has consecrated, and that the virtue of this 
blessing is more powerful than that of nature : because by it 
nature itself is changed ? Moses held the rod : he cast it on the 
ground : and it became a serpent — again he took it by the tail, 

and again it became a rod If now the blessing of men 

was powerful enough to change nature, what must we not say of 
the divine consecration, when the very words of our Lord operate ! 
For the sacrament which you receive, is accomplished by the 
word of Christ. Now if the word of Elias could call down fire 
from heaven, shall not the word of Christ be able to change 
the nature of created things ? 

' ' You have read concerning the creation of the world : He 
spoke, and it vas done: he commanded and it was formed. If, 
then, the word of Christ could draw out of nothing what till then 
had no existence, shall it not be able to change the things that 
exist, into what they irere not before ? For it is not a less effect 
of power, to give new existence to things, than to change the 
nature of things, that previously existed. We will now establish 
the truth of this mystery, from the example itself of the incar- 
nation. "Was the order of nature followed, when Jesus was born 
of a virgin ? Plainly, not. Then why is that order to be looked 
for here: It was the true flesh of Christ, which was crucified, 
which was buried: and this is truly the sacrament of his flesh. 
Our Lord himself proclaims: This is my body. Before the 
benediction given by the celestial words, it is called bread; but 
after the consecration the body of Christ is signified. He said 
also; This is my Mood. Before consecration, it has another 
name, and after consecration it is denominated blood. And you 
answer Amen : thai is, it it //'". What the mouth speaks, kt 
the internal sense confess : what the words intimate, let the affec- 
tion )'.•« ]. By these sacraments Christ feeds his Church, and by 
them ie the boo! strengthened. It is a mystery you should care- 
fully keep to yourselves lest you communicate it to the 

unworthy and publish the secret before unbelievers, by an unje- 

itraimd freedom of speech. V'ou must guard your faith with 
the utmost vigilance, that you may preserve the purity of your 



312 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

life and the secret of the mystery with inviolable fidelity." To 
argue on the foregoing words would weaken their force. I shall 
merely observe ; 1. that St. Ambrose not only makes a clear ex- 
position of the doctrine of trausubstantiation, but proves it more- 
over, by adducing the very proof and examples that have been 
produced in its defence since it became a contested point : 2. that 
the Eucharist is several times called a sacrament, which circum- 
stance will be found of service later: 3. that the neophytes, 
when instructed in the mysteries, were cautioned to preserve the 
most profound secrecy respecting them. 

St. Ambrose, or rather the very ancient author of a work upon 
the sacraments, which was for a long time attributed to that arch- 
bishop, after repeating the above cited passage nearly in so many 
words has the following additional observations in another book : 
" As our Saviour is the true Son of God, not merely by grace, 
like men, but by nature, being of the self-same substance with 
the Father ; so, according to his own words, it is his true ami 
real flesli that we eat, and his true and real blood that we drink. 
But you may here propose the objection stated by many of his 
disciples, when he spoke to them of eating his flesh and drinking 
his blood : how can it be his true and real flesh and blood, see- 
ing, as I do, the resemblance, but not the truth and reality of 
blood. I have already instructed you above of the power inhe- 
rent in the word of Christ to change and transform the works of 
nature. Moreover, when any of his disciples could not endure 
his words, but went away from him on hearing him talk of giving 
them his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, St. Peter remained 
firm, and said in the silence of all, — Thou hast the words of 
eternal life; to whom else should we go? Thus, to prevent 
similar objections being made by others, on the ground of a nat- 
ural horror to human blood, it has pleased the Almighty to favor 
you with a sacrament which, while it bears the resemblance, sup- 
plies you also with the grace and virtue of his true and real na- 
ture. I am the living bread, says he, which came down from 
heaven. Now his flesh did not come down from heaven, since it 
was derived from the blessed virgin upon earth. In what mat*- 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 313 

nor then, did this celestial and living bread come down from 
heaven '.' By the union of the divinity and humanity effected by 
Christ in his person. You, therefore, who receive his 
yicsh, participate of his divine substance in that sacred repast." 
That the niaiiducation here treated of is not one made by faith 
is must evident. It is that kind of manducation which excites 
the doubt ; how can it be his true and real flesh, since I do not 
see it V Now it would be absurd to suppose, that the circum- 
stances of the flesh not being seen would ever raise a doubt in 
any one's mind about its spiritual reception by faith, since con- 
trariwise, for such reception by faith, it is indispensably necessary 
that the flesh be not seen. 

St. (Jaudentius of Brescia 1 spoke in the same strain to the 
newly baptized, as you will hear. Describing the celebration 
of th.> pasch, he says : " Of all the things pointed out in the 
book of Exodus, we shall at present treat of those only, which 
cannot be explained before the catechumens, but which never- 
theless it is necessary to disclose and explain to the :iewly bap- 
tized.- In the shadows and figures of pasch, not 
mil- lamb, but many were slain, for each house had its sacrifice; 
because one victim could not suffice for all the people, and also 
because this mystery was a mere figure and not the reality of 
tin- passion of the Lord. For the figure of a thing is not the 
reality, but only the image and representation of the thing sig- 
nified. But now that the figure has ceased, tho one that died 
for all, immolated in the mystery of bread and wine, gives life 
through aU the Churches, and being consecrated, sanctifies those 
who COM 'I- ,!■•. This is the flesh of the lamb, this is his blood : 
fir the living bread that came down from heaven said : The 
which 1 will give you, is my flesh, for the life of the 

1 An. 306, Treatise II. on (he nature of ike pacramenta. 
mi additional ami direct proof that the famous secret, kepi by the 
( hnstians .i- w.-li from bhe catechumens as from the unbelievers, positively <'<>n- 
oealed the mysteries revealed to the newly-baptised, viz: the real presence and 
the change of substance in the Eucharist, as St. Cyril, the two I (regories ami St. 
Ambrose have clearly explained it to them, ami as we Shall now see St. (Jauileii- 
qplaining it 
27 



314 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

world. His blood is rightly expressed by the species of wine, 
because when he says in the Gospel, I am the true vine, he suf- 
ficiently declares that the wine, which is offered in the figure of 

his passion, is his blood He who is the Creator and Lord of 

all things, and who produces bread from the earth, of the bread 
makes his own proper body, (for he is able, and he promised to 
do it ;) and he who changed water into wine, now changes nine 
into his blood. 

"The portion of scripture we have read, closing its subject 
with an excellent and mysterious conclusion, says: For it is 
the pasch of the Lord. O the depth of the riches, of the know- 
ledge and wisdom of God! It is the pasch, he says, that is the 
passover or passage of the Lord, to the end that you may not 
think that to be earthly which has been made heavenly by him 
who himself passes into it by making it his body and blood. 
For what we have said above in general terms touching the 
manner of eating the flesh of the pascal lamb, we must particu- 
larly observe in the manner of receiving the same mysteries of 
the passion of our Lord. Therefore you ought not to reject them, 
considering them, like the Jews, to be crude flesh and blood, and 
with the Jews exclaiming : How can he give us his flesh to eat ? 
Neither ought you to represent this sacrament to your minds as 
any thing common or earthly, but rather believe with a firm faith , 
that, by the fire of the Holy Spirit, this sacrament is in effect 
become what the Lord assures you it is. For what you receive 
is the body of him, who is the living and heavenly bread, and 
the blood of him, who is the sacred vine. And we know that, 
when he presented to his disciples the consecrated bread and wine, 
he said: This is my body, this is my blood. Let us therefore 

believe him, whose faith we profess: for truth cannot lie 

As then it was ordained in the old law to eat the head of the 
paschal lamb and also the feet, we must now, in the new law, 
eat both the head of Jesus Christ, which is his divinity, and the 
feet, which is his humanity, united and concealed as they are in 
the sacred and divine mysteries : believing every thing that has 
been transmitted to us by the tradition of the Church, and being 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 315 

careful not to break this solid and firm bone, that is, the truth 
delivered from his own mouth, This is my body, and this is my 
blood . 

"And now, if there remains any thing, which you do not 
understand in this explanation, let it be consumed by the ardor 
of your faith. For our God is a consuming fire, purifying and 
enlightening our minds for the understanding of divine things, 
that, discovering the mysterious causes of this same celestial 
sacrifice instituted by Christ, we may render him eternal thanks 
for bo great and ineffable a gift. For it is the true inheritence 
of his New Testament, which he left us on the very night of his 
passion ; as the pledge of his presence. It is the viaticum with 
which we are fed and fortified in the pilgrimage of this life, until 
we arrive at heaven, and the full and unveiled enjoyment of him, 
who when on earth, proclaimed to us : Unless you eat my flesh, 
and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you. It is his 
will that we should perpetually be favored with his graces and 
blessings, and that his blood should continually sanctify our souls 
by the representation of his passion. Therefore did he command 
his disciples, whom he had established the first pastors of his 
Church, to celebrate icithout ceasing these mysteries of eternal life, 
until Jesus Christ should come down again from heaven ; to the 
end that the pastors and the rest of the faithful having always 
before their eyes the representation of the passion of Christ, and 
even receiving it in their mouth and stomach, the remembrance 
of our redemption should never be effaced from our memory, and 
that we might always have at hand an easy remedy and sure 
preservative against the poison of the devil. Do you therefore, 
as well as we, receive, with all the holy avidity of your hearts, 
this sacrifice of the pasch of the Saviour of mankind, that we 
may be thoroughly sanctified in soul and body by our Lord 
Jesse Christ, whom we believe to be personally present in these his 
saered mysteries." Were it not for fear of spinning out this 
diea rtatiorj to a needless length, I should feel much pleasure in 
remarking upon the passages that chiefly strike me in this dis- 
course. We here perceive that ancient simplicity which invites, 



31 G on the church of England 

and a solidity of doctrine that supports and fortifies faith. We 
must not fail at least to observe that the holy bishop professedly 
d .rives from the tradition of the Churches all the the instructions 
he gives bo the newly-baptised, and that he moreover testifies 
that the apostles, pursuant to the command of their master, were 
accustomed to celebrate the liturgy at all times and in all places. 
Observe also that after establishing the real presence and tran- 
sut.stautiation in the clearest and most unequivocal terms, he 
Still gives to the Eucharist the appellations ot sacrament and pledge 
of the presence of the mystery of bread and wine, and goes SO 
far as to say that the blood is well represented under the species 
of wine. You see then that these different forms of expression 
are perfectly consistent with the Catholic doctrine: and I 
entreat you to carry this in your mind to the conclusion of this 

subject. 

St. Chrysostom frequently observes the relationship that exists 
between the Eucharist and the Jewish pasch, and teaches that 
the blood of the paschal lamb is the emblem of the blood of 
Christ, that the figure belonged to the Old Testament, the 
to tin New. 

Listen to his instructions on this subject to the newly- 
baptised : " The statues of princes L. : ucen served as an asylum 
to men who had fled to them for refuge, not because they were 
made of brass, but because they were thi images of the 
princes In like manner, the lamb saved the Israelites, not be- 
cause it was blood, but because it prefigured the blood of our 
Saviour, and announced bis coming. Now therefore, were the 
enemy to discover, not the blood of the figurative lamb printed 
on our door-posts, but the Wood of the truth and reality resplen- 
dent in the mouth of (he faithful, he would keep at a still greater 
distance from us. For if the angel passed by at the sight of the 
figure, how much more will the enemy be scared at the appear- 
ance of the reality? Consider with what kind of aliment 

he feeds and nourishes us. He himself is the substance of the 
ali mell 1 ; he himself is our food. For as a tender mother,.un- 
pelled by the feelings of nature, is anxious to feed her offspring, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 317 

with all the milk she can supply : so Jesus Christ feeds, with 
his own blood, those whom he regenerates." ' 

" Let us believe God is every thing, and not gainsay him, s 
although what is said may seem contrary to our reason and our 
sight. Let his words prevail and be preferred before the testi- 
mony of our eyes. Thus let us do in mysteries, not looking 
only on the things that lie before us, but holding fast his words ; 
for his word cannot deceive ; but our sense is very easily deceived. 
That never failed ; this often. Since then, his word says ; This 
is my body ; let us assent, and believe, and view it with the eyes 
of our understanding : Christ left us nothing sensible, but spi- 
ritual and intellectual objects, under sensible forms for if 

you were incorporeal, he would have bequeathed to you gifts purely 
incorporeal; but as your soul is united to a body, those gifts are 
to be comprehended under sensible and corporeal signs. How 
many persons are heard to say ; I would wish to behold his fig- 
ure, his shape, his attire ! But you see him, you touch him, 
you receive him into your breast. You would, however, wish 
to see his garments. He gives himself to you, not only to be 
looked on, but to be touched also, to be eaten, to be admitted 
into your breast. If you cannot reflect, without indignation, 
upon the treason of Judas and the ingratitude of those who cru- 
cified the Lord, see that you do not render yourselves guilty of 
the profanation of his body and blood. Those unfortunate men 
inflicted death on the sacred body of Christ, and you, after so 
many benefits received, usher him into an impure and defiled 
soul ! for not content with becoming man and being ignominiously 
treated, he has chosen moreover to become united with you, so 
that you form but one body with him, and this, not only by 
faith, but actually and in reality. 

" How pure and holy ought he to be who is made partaker of 
so sublime a sacrifice ! How much purer then the rays of the 

I II. ,ni. to tin- Neophytes. Thu same Bentimenta are found in nearly the same 
words, on the Horn, of St John, and in the IX to the people of Antioch. -Ilom. 
i,\. ,,, the people of antioch, np.iiu-d In great measure in Ilom. EXXXlll. on 
Si. Matthew. 



318 on the church of England 

sun should be tlie hand that distributes this flesh, the mouth 
that is filled with this spiritual flame, the tongue that is purpled 
with this adorable blood ! Reflect, to what an honor you are 
raised, to what a table you are admitted! He, whom the angels 
tremble to behold, and at the contemplation of whose majesty 
they are struck with awful terror. He feeds us with his own 
substance: with him we are intimately united, so as to become 
one body and one flesh with him. Who shall tell the wonders 
of the Lard ? Who shall duly celebrate his praise ? What pas- 
tor ever fed his sheep with the members of his own body! But 
why do I mention pastors? Even mothers sometimes permit 
their infants to be suckled by strange nurses. But he will not 
allow his own to be thus treated. He himself nourishes them 
with his own blood, and gives himself entirely to them 

" Jesus Christ, who formerly produced these astonishing effects 
at his last supper with his disciples, is the same who produ< ea 
them now. We act as his officers and ministers: but it is lie 
who sanctifies the offerings and changes them into his body nnd 
blood This discourse I address not only to you, who par- 
ticipate of them, but also to you who are the dispensers of them. 1 
And you, laics, when you approach the sacred body, believe that 
you receive it from the invisible hand of Christ : for he who has 
done more, that is, has laid himself upon the altar, will not dis- 
dain to present you his body." The illustrious prelate proceeds 
afterwards to treat of the duty of charity, which he greatly ex- 
tols as the best disposition for the mysteries : and alluding to the 
Lord's Supper he adds : " The table at which he eat was not of 
silver, nor was the chalice from which he poured out blood to his 
apostles, of gold, and yet how precious and awful was this ves- 
sel, by reason of the spirit with which it was replenished! 

Althoush we possess not any of the first instructions that St. 
Aug-; .Ane must have given to his neophytes on their leaving the 

1 These words sufficiently indicate that there were none but ecclesiastics and the 
faithful present: this is still better proved by the clearness with which the doc- 
t ioefi are propounded and explained, in every point of view. On this account 1 
hive made no hesitation in annexing this homily to the dogmatical instructions 
delivered for the neophytes. 



AST) THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 319 

baptismal font and previous to their participating of the Eucharist, 
although the discourses of his that are extant turn, generally, 
upon the paschal solemnity or the congruence of the bread and 
wine with the mystical body of our Lord, or on the moral dispo- 
sitions that should accompany us and render us worthy of ap- 
proaching daily to the sacred table, we still may occasionally find 
the doctrine and belief of the Church briefly yet clearly touched 
upon. " I am mindful," says he to his baptised adults, " of my 
promise made to you. I engaged to deliver to you, who have 
been baptised, an explanation of the sacrament of the Lord's 
table, which you at present behold, and of which you were, last 
ni'jht, partakers. You should know what you have received, 
what you do receive, and what you ought receive every day. 
The bread that you behold on the altar, being consecrated by the 
tcord of God is the body of Jesus Christ; this chalice, or rather 
that which is in the chalice, being sanctified by the word of God, 
is the blood of Christ." ' Such is the compendium of the instruc- 
tion that had already been given to the newly-baptised the evening 
before, previous to their admission to the sacred table, for which 
r< i son the holy bishop merely makes reference to it without dwelling 
further upon it, and passes on to the particular subject of his dis- 
course, which is to know why the body and blood are given un- 
der the form of bread and wine. "This," says he, "is ex- 
plained by the apostle: We being many are but one body, one 
bread. He admirably developes the thought of the apostles, 
shewing thai the mystical body, of which we are all members, is 
represented by the numerous grains of corn that compose the same 
bread and the different grapes that compose the same wine : hence, 
he concludes that this was the reason why Christ made choice of the 
matter of bread and wine to form of them his body and blood. 

This instruction is precisely the same in substance and nearly 
the same in words as is found in another discourse, which St. 
Pulgentius has preserved, and which was delivered in the same 
circumstances: " Yesterday eve you beheld the same that you 
behold at present. But you have not as yet been informed 
■ Sermon lA.wiil. 



320 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

what they were, what they signified, and how great and ex- 
cellent were those things of which they were the sacrament. 
What you see, then, is bread, this your eyes declare it to be : 
but according to the testimony that faith must give concerning 
it, the bread is the body of Christ, and the wine of this chalice it 
the blood of Christ." ' Here is the doctrine in its abridged form ; 
and because it had been fully detailed by him the evening be- 
fore. St. Augustine proceeds to another subject that he had 
not as yet treated, to the explanation of the mysterious congru- 
ence and conformity of the matter of the sacrament with the 
mystical body of Jesus Christ. 

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hitherto had not permitted 
himself to be known by the two disciples, was pleased that they 
should know him in the breaking of bread. The faithful under- 
stand what I say: they know Christ in the breaking of bread. 
For it is not all bread, but that which receives the benediction 
of Christ, that becomes the body of Christ." 2 

"Tell me, my brethren, 3 on what occasion was it that our 
Lord was pleased to make himself known ? It was when he broke 
bread with two of his disciples at Emmaus. We then may rest as- 
sured : we break bread and we recognise our Lord. He deter- 
mined to be known in this action alone, for our sakes, who were not 
to behold him in his mortal flesh, and yet were to eat his flesh " * 

1 Discnurse to the newly-baptised. * Sermon CCXXXIV. for Easter day, to the 
un-baptised and the people. 3 Sermon CLX. on the pasch, to the same. 

4 Reason itself and the discipline of the Church convince us that no biahop 
could dispense with himself from complying with the duty of instructing the 
newly-baptised before their admission to the sacred table. It cannot there ore 
be doubted that St. Augustine composed discourses similar to those of SS. Cyril, 
Ambrose, Gaudentius, &c, for the purpose of instructing his regenerated children 
in the mystery of the Eucharist, previous to their participation thereof. He has 
left us none of his purely elementary and dogmatic instructions. We have many 
of his discourses addressed to the neophytes and the people. We have his ser- 
mons for Easter-Sunday and the days of the octave. All these go upon tne sup- 
position that they had communicated the evening before, and had consequently 
been initiated in the doctrine concealed from thorn while catechumens, but neces- 
sarily revealed and explained to them before communion, that they might kn»n- 
the greatnem of the present* there made to them by God: and that they might net 
fall into that criminal ignorance, of which those are guilty, says Hesychius, \\1. i . 
partake of the body of Christ, without knowing that it in really the body ■;/" ( luLt. 



a:;d the reformation in general. 321 

"Receive," says St. Augustine again, "receive in the bread 
what was fastened to the cross; receive in the chalice what is- 
sued from the side of Jesus Christ. For he will receive death 
and us jt life, who shall believe that life is capable of a falsehood." 1 
"Doubt not," says St. Cyril of Alexandria, "of this truth, 
Btnee Christ bo manifestly assures us that it is his body, but ra- 
ther receive with faith the words of our Saviour; for, being the 
truth, he cannot speak what is uutrue." * 

The same patriarch teaches again that "he, who was eaten 
figuratively in Egypt, voluntarily immolates himself in this sup- 
per ; and that, after having eaten the %ure, because it was for 
him to accomplish the legal ^gures, I t | educed the reality, by 
; l \ in ir himself to be the food of life." " 

" The i f, we speak of, is awful and astonishing. There, 

G-cd. who taketh away the sins of the world, is im- 
here, is the i-V er rejoiced, and the Son voluntarily 
enemies, but by himself, that man 
may m derstai c .-ments he has endured for his salvation 

i -oluntary." 4 
| ably did not expect to find such clear, express and 
decisive evidence. All this is, however, well known, and our 
jjiste have often cited it to protcstant theologians. And 
shall it always be produced without effect? Shall it always be 
our fete to be perpetually producing the most convincing proofs, 
and yours to be as perpetually refusing them your assent? I 
have, notwithstanding, the courage to hope, that in this new 
point of view in which they have been presented, they will leave 
a deeper impression upon your mind. The more you reflect 
upoD the doctrine of the Fathers, the more will you perceive an 
almost irresistible force impelling yon towards Catholicity. Al- 
low me to put it to your candor, whether it is not most, clear and 

evident, that, it' the Fathers had trained the neophytes and the 
faithful in the principles of Luther and Zuinglius, they would 

1 Another di* rse f" Hi" newly-baptised, cited by I!. Alger, about the year 

1120, * Passage cited by Victor of Antiocb., E&lias of Crete, and according with 
a manuscript of the Elector of Bavarian -Hi coma ■•■! ili^ mj tical Bupper. 
1 'llir Bame. 



322 ON TUE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 

never had dreamed of assuring them, that, in the Eucharist, 
what is bread before the consecration becomes after the consecra- 
tion the true and real body of Christ. Now St. Justin positively 
testifies, 1 "That the bread and wine, having become the Eu- 
charist by the prayer of the word of God, are the flesh and blood of 
the same incarnate Christ." St. Gregory of Nyssa 2 declares ' 'that 
the bread is but bread at the first, but that no sooner is it con- 
secrated by the mystical prayer, than it is called and actually is 
the body of Jesus Christ." St. Ambrose 3 inculcates the same 
doctrine in the following terms : " Our Lord himself proclaims ; 
This is my body. Before the benediction of the celestial words, 
the bread is named : after the consecration, the body of Christ 
is signified. He himself calls it his blood. Before consecration 
it has another name : after consecration it is denominated blood . 
And you answer, Amen, that is, it is true. What the mouth 
speaks, let the mind inwardly confess and assent to." And the 
author of the book of the sacraments, says after him, "You will 
perhaps say, it is nothing but common bread. It is indeed bread 
before the words of the sacrament ; but after the consecration, 
from being bread, it becomes the flesh of Christ." 

Do you not see most clearly that, according to the notions of 
persons professing the protestant religion, it never would have 
entered into the minds of the Fathers to establish a change of 
substance in the Eucharistic bread and wine, or to prove this 
change to the neophytes and the faithful ? Yet the Fathers fre- 
quently and urgently press the belief of the change of substance 
upon them and support the doctrine by proofs. We find even in 
Origin the following passage : 4 "We eat the bread that is offered 
which by prayer is made a holy body ; by which, they, who 
partake of it with a pure spirit, are rendered more holy." St. 
Cyril of Jerusalem 5 speaks still more clearly and pointedly. 
" Jesus Christ, in Cana of Galilee, once changed water into wine 
by his will only, and shall we think it less worthy of credit, that 
he changed wine into blood?" St. Gregory of Nyssa. 6 "By 

1 Apology I. 3 Discourse on the baptism of Christ. 3 To the newly-baptised. 
4 Against Celsua. 5 Catech. IV. 6 Orat. Catech. c. XXXVII. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 323 

virtue of the benediction the nature of visible things is changed 
in his body And so I now believe that the bread, sancti- 
fied by the word of God, is transformed and changed into the 
body of Christ." St. Ambrose 1 teaches us " that by the bene- 
diction nature itself is changed (he proves it by a reference to 
the double change wrought by Moses in the rod) and that, if 
the blessing of a man be powerful enough to change nature, 
much more may be said of the divine consecration, when the 
words of our Lord operate : that, if the word of Elias could call 
down fire from heaven, the word of Christ must be still more 
capable of changing the nature of the elements, and of changing 
things that are into that which they were not." And again: 2 
' ' By the mystery of the sacred prayer, the sacramental bread and 
wine are changed into body and blood." St. Gaudentius; 3 "The 
Creator and Lord, who produces bread from the earth, of the 
bread makes his own proper body, (because he is able and he 
promised to do it) : and as of water he made wine, so of wine 
he makes his blood." St. Chrysostom : 4 " The things that are 
proposed are not the effects of human power ; but he who effected 
them at his last supper, effects them still at the present time; we 
only act as his ministers ; he who consecrates and changes them 
is Christ himself." St. Cyril of Alexandria, 5 exclaims against 
those who denied the possibility of the change. " If thou per- 
BUtest in asking how, I, in my turn, will ask thee how the rod 
of Moses was changed into a serpent; how the waters were 

changed into blood Ilesychius: 6 "The sanctification of 

the mystic sacrifice, the change and transformation of sensible 
into spiritual things, must be attributed to him, who is the true 
]iiii->t." " It is this invisible priest (says St. Oesaritis of Aries) 7 
who, by the secret virtue of Ids divine word, changes visible 

creatures into the substance of Ins body and blood As then, 

by a simple word, find, in an instant, formed out of nothing the 
height of the heavens, the depth of the sea, and the wide ex- 

i Tn the newly-baptised. »BookIV. On faith. » to the neophytes. <Houi. 
I.XWIII. on St. Matthew. tDogmatkaL vnatnutiem mi Si. John, I!. IV. 
■ Comment) on LevMaui. 'Horn, on the peach. 



324 ON THE CnURCH OP ENGLAND 

tendon of the earth, so, likewise, in the spiritual sacraments, by 
a power equally great, the virtue of his word is instantly fol- 
hiwe. by the effect." Eusebius of Euiessa, or the author of the 
homilies which for a thousand years have gone under his name: 
" The invisible sacrifice converts by a word, pregnaut with a 
secret power, visible creatures iuto the substance of his body and 

blood And what is there wonderful in his being able to 

change by his word the things which he was able to create by 
his word ? On the contrary, one would imagine it to be less 
wonderful for him to change into something more excellent, 
that which he had created out of nothing." 

Do you not here again perceive that, according to the figura- 
tive sense of Zuinglius, the Fathers would have had nothing 
wonderful to present in the Eucharist to the admiration of t!ie 
faithful and the neophytes? And yet attend to the words of the 
holy and learned deacon Ephrem : l " The illustrious patriarch , 
Abraham, presented terrestrial food to angels descended from 
heaven, and they eat it. Doubtless it was most miraculous to 
see incorporeal spirits eating meats on earth. But that, which 
the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, has done for us, 
baffles language, and surpasses imagination : since, notwithstand- 
ing our fleshly composition, he feeds us with spirit and fire, giv- 
ing us his body to eat and his blood to drink." 

St. Ambrose : 2 " And now, if the mere benediction of a man 
(Moses) was powerful enough to change nature, what must we 
not say of the divine consecration, when the very words of our 

Lord operate? You have read concerning the creation of 

the world : He sp >ke, and it was made ; he commanded and it was 
formed. If then the word of Christ could draw out of nothing 
what till then had no existence, shall it not be able to chant/e 
the things that exist, into what they were not before ? Why 
look you for the order of nature in the production of the body 
of Jesus Christ in this sacrament, seeing that the order of nature 
is equally disregarded in the same Lord being born of a virgin V 

1 Against curiosity in searching into the divine nature. 2 Discourse to those 
who were to be initiated. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 6'lo 

St. Chrysostom upon the words: How can he give us Ms flesh to 
cat. 1 " When a person asks how a thing can be clone, he begins 

to doubt whether it can be done If you inquisitively search 

into this wonderful work, why do you not also ask, after the mi- 
racle of the five loaves : How did he effect so prodigious a mul- 
tiplication ? But you will say the thing spoke for itself, it 

was plain to the eye. And I tell you that for that very reason 
they should have believed it to be as easy for him to perform this 
last miracle. For he first multiplied the loaves, that the Jews 
might no longer remain incredulous as to what he had afterwards 

to announce to them " And elsewhere: 2 " The words that 

I have spoken are spirit and life, that is, are divine and spiritual, 
have nothing carnal about them, depend not on the ordinary laws 
of nature." And again in another homily: 3 "He, that was 
present at the last supper, is the same that is now present and 
consecrates our feast : for it is not man who makes the things 
lying on the altar lecome the body and blood of Christ ; but that 
Christ who was crucified for us. The words indeed are pro- 
nounced by the priest, but it is the power and grace of God that 
consecrates them. He said, This is my body : these words make 
the change. And as the words of God, increase, and multiply 
mill replenish the whole earth, though spoken but once at the 
creation of the world, still produce their effect, by imparting to 
human nature the power and virtue of generating children through 
the course of ages : in like manner, although the adorable words 
of Christ, Tin's is 'my body, were but once uttered, they have 
not failed to secure to this sacrifice all their virtue and efficacy 
to the present day on the altars of the Church, and will not fail 
are the sumo until the last coming of our Lord." I could 
fill twenty pages with quotations from this great archbishop, and 
from many others : llesyehins, Cesarius, Eusebius of Emessa, 
for example. But what have just been produced should he suf- 
ficient. For assuredly, neither Zuinglius, nor any of his fol- 

1 Homily XLV. on St. John. ! Homily XLVI. on St. John, ' On the treason 
of Judns. 



326 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

lowers will ever be able to enlarge upon such mysteries and won- 
derful operations in the Eucharist of their conception. 

Again, Sir, 3-011 must here candidly acknowledge that, had the 
belief and persuasion of the primitive fathers been exactly that 
of the sacramentarians, who in later ages have informed us that 
the bread and wine remain exactly the same before and after the 
consecration, the faithful and neophytes could have had no difficulty 
in conceiving and no hesitation in believing such a doctrine, 
neither would the Fathers have had to labor in removing doubts 
and difficulties from their minds. And yet we find St. Gregory 
Nazianzen ' t-elliug them : " Approach with firm faith to eat the 
body and drink the blood of Christ, and entertain not the re- 
motest dovbt respecting them." St. Hilary: 2 "Let us hold to 
what is written. Jesus Christ leaves no room to doubt of the 
reality of his flesh and blood, since the declaration of our Lord 
and of our faith asserts it to be his flesh indeed and his blood 
indeed." St. Cyril of Jerusalem : 3 "With all confidence, let 
us receive the body and blood of Christ, for under the appear- 
ance of bread, his body is given to us ; and under the appear- 
ance of wine, his blood is given. For, as Christ, speaking of 
the bread, declared and said, this is my body, who shall dare to 
douht it ?" St. Ephrem : 4 ' ' Participate in the immaculate body 
and blood of the Lord, with a firm faith, resting assured th;.t 
you receive the lamb whole and entire." St. Ambrose 5 and the 
author of the book on the sacraments: " The Lord assures us 
that we receive his bod}' and blood ; ought we to doubt the truth 
of his words, or the correctness of his testimony? You will 
perhaps object: how can it be his true and real flesh, if the 
bread bears no appearance of real flesh ? How can it be his blood, 
since I behold indeed the resemblance, but in no wise the reality 
of blood? I have already told you that the word of Christ can 
change the ordinary nature of things." Reflect but for a moment 
on this doubt : and you will feel that it infallibly proves the real 

lOrat. XLII. T. I. p. 690. Ed. Colonise, 1690. 2 B. Till, on the Trinity. 
* Catech. IV. mystery. 4 Against curiosity in searching into the divine nature. 
5 To the neophytes, B. IV. of the Sacraments. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 327 

presence as taught by St. Ambrose. Such a doubt, in fact, is 
most natural, when the body is asserted to be present, although 
the flesh appears not to human sight. But it is extravagant, if 
the body be supposed absent in heaven ; for in that case, there 
would be no need for the flesh to appear, but on the contrary, it 
should not appear at all, since it is not there at all. 

Had they believed and taught at that time, what all protestants 
have since pretended, that the bread and wine remained after con- 
secration the same as they were before, neither the faithful would 
have had any reason to mistrust their senses, nor the fathers to 
admonish them to disregard their testimony. And yet we find 
that St. Cyril of Jerusalem says to his neophytes: 1 "Ho not 
consider them as common bread and wine, for they are the body 
and blood of Jesus Christ, according to his words; and although 
your senses might suggest that to you, let faith confirm you. 
J udge not of the thing by your taste, but by faith assure your- 
self, without the least doubt, that you are honored with the body 
and blood of Christ. This knowing, and of this being assured, 
thai what appears tp you bread, is not bread, but the body of 
( Ihrist, although the taste judges it to be bread, and that the wine, 
which you see and which has the taste of wine, is not wine, but 
the blood of Christ." St. Chrysostom : 2 "Let us believe God 
in every thing, and not gainsay him, although what is said may 
seem contrary to our reason and our sight. Lei his word orer- 
power both. Thus let us do in mysteries : not looking only on 
the things that lie before us, but holding fast his words: for his 
word cannot deceive; but our senses are very easily deceived. 
The former never failed the latter often. Since then his word 
: This is my body; let us assent, and believe, and view it 
with an intellectual eye." Hesjchius: 3 "The spirit of God 
which is in 08, and the word that he has left us, regulate the use 
of our senses, and prevent not only our sense of taste, but the 
- also of hearing, seeing, touching, and smelling, from an 
undue interference in mysteries, bo that they lead m not to any 

' Catcch. 1 V mytk rv. '-' Horn. LXXXI EL. en St. .Matthew. 3 Comment, on Le- 

t'i'l'-KS-. 



328 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

low ideas, or weak and presumptuous reasonings, unworthy the 
grandeur and sublimity of the mysteries. We must attribute 
the Banctification of the mystic sacrifice, and the change or trans- 
formation of the sensible into spiritual things, to him, who is 
the true priest, Jesus Christ, that is, we must consider him as 
the sole worker of this miracle, because the power of the word, 
which he has pronounced, sanctify these visible things to such a 
degree that they are raised far beyond the reach of our senses." 
And St. Cesarius: 1 "We must judge by faith, and not by our 
senses, of this undivided and perfect victim, which cannot be 
seen by corporeal and outward eyes, but only by those that are 
interior and spiritual. Of this our Lord speaks, when, with di- 
vine authority, he pronounces that his flesh is meat indeed and 
his blood drink indeed. Wherefore we must give no place to 
incredulous doubts in our minds, seeing that the author of this 
heavenly gift himself testifies to its truth and reality." 

Had the primitive ages believed and taught what is now gen- 
erally believed in your Church and what has always been taught 
among the Calvinists, that the bread and wine are the signs and 
figures of the body and blood, the memorial of Christ present in 
heaven, but absent from earth, how happens it that the Fathers 
say nothing of the kind on those occasions, when they were able, 
nay, even bound to give a clear exposition of the doctrine ? I 
allude to the instructions given to the newly-baptized before their 
admission to the Eucharist. You have seen these instructions. 
All of them, that are extant, have, to the best of my knowledge, 
been laid before you. Here is not a word said about figures or 
signs to represent the absent object. It is in these plain and 
dogmatical instructions, however, that such expressions ought 
of necessity to be found. Why do they not appear? Why are 
the bread and wine never presented to us is this simple point of 
view, so plain and easy to, our conception? Why, on the con- 
trary, are we perpetually reminded every time that it is the true 
and real body of Jesus Christ, the body that was crucified, the 
blood that flowed from his side, and that a change of substance is 
1 Horn, on the Pasch. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 329 

effected by the all-powerful word of a God? And why do the 
Fathers, to establish the certitude of this astonishing change, and 
to give additional motives of its credibility, remind the neophytes 
of the wonders of the creation, the miracles of Moses, Elias, 
and Eliseus, of the birth of Christ, the miracle of the marriage 
feast of Cana, and that of the multiplication of the loaves? 
Would it not be the height of folly to search heaven and earth 
for the greatest prodigies ever worked therein by an almighty 
power, merely for the purpose of proving to these neophytes, 
that a God made man, had most evidently the power of chang- 
ing also the bread and wine into the signs and figures of his 
body and blood, a thing which the poorest mortal among us can 
declare and do, whenever he pleases. 

Again, Sir, let me ask you, how, in your opinion, will your 
modern notions respecting the Eucharist, accord with the follow- 
ing exhortation of St. John Chrysostom? 1 "When you ap- 
proach the holy table, believe that the King of all things is there 

present; for he is really present Consider, 2 what a victim 

via have to handle, what a table you have to approach; think 
within yourselves that, being but dust and ashes, you receive the 

body and blood of Jesus Christ Consider 3 that we eat Him, 

who sits on high and is adored by the angels....... wonderful 

mystery^ O the goodness of God! He who sits on high with 
his Father, is received into the hand of everyone! How I 
should wish, do many exclaim, to behold his countenance and 
his garments! God grants you even more than you desire — he 
gives you himself; you receive him, you cat him in reality." 

And when your teachers mount the pulpit to communicate to 
yon their cherished and boasted conceptions respecting the sac- 
rament, will they address you in the language of St. Hilary?* 
'It would be foolish and impious to say what we do of the 
natural verity of Christ within us, if he himself had not taught 
11 < it. for it is he that said: my flesh is meat indeed, and my 
blood is drink indeed: he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my 

I Horn, on tin- Seraphim. *Oa the Nativity. 3 Qn the Ep. to (lie Hebrau, 

*Ontheprie*th /. B. 111. »B. VIII. "» '/" Trinity. 

28 1 



330 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

blood, abideth in me, and I in him : he leaves no place to doubt 
of the reality of lii.s body and blood ; for now by the profession 
of the Lord himself, and according to our belief, it is truly flesh 
and truly blood " 

Will they say with St. Augustine: 1 "Does it not appear 
foolish and extravagant to say, eat my flesh and drink my blood : 
he that doth not eat my flesh and drink my blood, shall not have 
life in him ? It did indeed appear foolish and extravagant. ; but 
only to the ignorant and the foolish." Have you ever heard 
your preachers adopt language similar to that which has been 
quoted above? How, in fact, should they speak the language, 
having so openly repudiated the doctrine of antiquity? 

I had proposed here to conclude my observations on the doc- 
trine of the Fathers, and to close a discussion that you must by 
this time perceive to be decisively terminated. But the subject 
is inexhaustible : these ancient writings still detain me by force 
among them : proofs in profusion start up on every side of me. 
You have just learned their sentiments and expressions respect- 
ing the majesty and sublimity of the mystery, and the insur- 
mountable difficulties attendant upon the belief of the real pre- 
sence and transubstantiation, I would willingly proceed a step 
further, and shew you, that they have been not less alive to the 
striking consequences deducible from such doctrines, nor less 
distinct and clear in developing the same. In fact, if the bread 
be really changed into the body of Christ, it is correct to say 
with Gelasius of Cizicum and St. Chrysostom ; "that the body 
is proposed to us, that the lamb is lying before us ;" with St. 
Cyril of Alexandria, " that it is not the Deity, hut the body of 
the Word that is presented upon the sacred tables of the Church;" 
with Optatus of Milevis; that the members of Christ are stretched 
upon the altar : that the altar is the seat of the body and blood 
of Christ," with St. Augustine; "that we receive with faithful 
heart and mouth the mediator between God and man, Jesus 
Christ made man, who gave us his body to eat and his blood to 

i Discourse on Ps. XXXIII. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 331 

drink, although it seems more horrible to eat the flesh of a man 
than to kill him, to drink human blood than to shed it." 

If the body of Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, his 
body must either be received in part, or whole and -entire, by 
each communicant. We hold that each communicant receives 
the entire and indivisible body of Jesus Christ. This dogma, 
supposing as it does, his simultaneous presence in a thousand 
places, we look upon as a wonderful miracle, capable of raising 
doubts, which are to be dissipated by faith and confidence in the 
all-powerful word of God. Now we find that this wonder has 
struck the minds and excited the astonishment of the Fathers. 
" "We must consider, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, 1 how it can be 
that this single body, being distributed to thousands of the faith- 
ful should he found whole and entire in each person who receives 
it, and still remain whole and entire in itself." 

This question evidently supposes the unity and indivisibility 
of the body of Christ in every receiver to have been believed 
and taught. The reply, as you are prepared to expect, attempts 
not to explain the mystery, but proves the change of substance 
in the Eucharist. The power of the Word, who as man was 
nourished with bread, rendered the bread that he eat his holy 
body. In like manner, this bread is sanctified by the word of* 
God and prayer, not passing into the body of the Word, by eat- 
ing and drinking, but being instantly changed into the body of 
the Word, according to what lie said : this is my body." 

• We always offer the same victim, says St. Chrysostom. 8 not 
as in the old law, sometimes one aud sometimes another: bore it 
is always tbe same, for which reason there is but one sacrifice: 
for, if tbe diversity of places, in which the sacrifice is offered, 
multiplied tbe sacrifice, we should have to allow that there were 
Cbriste. But llierc is but one Christ, who is entire here 
and entire there, possessing still but one body: for which reason 
t!:* re i- Kilt one sacrifice.'* He who receives but a part of the 
consecrated species, Bays St. Kutych'ms, 3 receives, notwitbstand- 

l Catech. Difl. ill. WWII. "Horn, on tJw Epistle to the Hub. 3 Fragments 
pn sei red in Nioeta . 



332 ON THE CHURCII OF ENGLAND 

iag, whole and entire the most holy body and the adorable blood 
of the Lord : for although the body be distributed to all, being 
mingled up with each of them, it nevertheless always remains in- 
divisible in itself, as one only seal, being employed to make 
many impressions on wax, leaves at each impression its perfect 
figure and form and still remains one and the same, neither 
changed nor divided by its image being stamped upon a multi- 
plicity of objects." 

If Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, it follows that, 
when he communicated with his apostles, he bore his own body 
in his hands, and drank his own blood. The consequence is 
rigorously correct: and you shall now see whether the Fathers 
were aware of it. St. Augustine explaining the title of psalm 
XXXIII. in which it is said, according to the Septuagint, that 
he was carried in his own hands, expresses himself as follows: 
" 'Who can comprehend, my bretheren, how such a thing can be 
performed by a man V Who is it that holds himself in his own 
hands ? A man may indeed be held in the hands of another, but 
never in his own. We cannot therefore discover how this can 
be understood of David in the literal sense : but can easily see 
how it can be understood of Christ according to the hitter ; for 
Christ lore himself in his own hands, when giving his body to 
us, he said : " This is my body, for he then bore that body in his 
own hands." 

"Jesus Christ," says St. Chrysostom, 1 "himself drank from 
his chalice, least his apostles hearing these his words should say 
within themselves: Do we then drink his blood and eat his flesh! 
and be troubled at the thought ; for, when he spoke of these 
mysteries, many were scandalized. To prevent this trouble and 
to remove all uneasiness from their minds, in their participation 
of the mysteries he set the first example ; and this was the rea- 
son why he drank h is own blood." St. Jerome declares ;* ' ' Moses 
gave us not the true bread ; but our Lord Jesus did. He in- 
vites us to the feast and is himself our meat : he eats with us 

' Horn. LXXXIII. on St. Matthew. " Epist. ad. lletlib. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 333 

and we receive and eat him." Would such ideas ever enter into 
the heads of Calvinists, would they ever had come into the minds 
of the Fathers, had they not been convinced of the real presence 
of Jesus Christ in the sacrament which he instituted at his last 
supper V 

To put a finishing stroke to our proofs and a termination to 
our reflections already too protracted, it is most evident that the 
Fathers believed and taught the real presence of Jesus Christ in 
the Eucharist, if they positively instructed the faithful and the 
neophytes never to approach but with sentiments of true and per- 
fect adoration. Now the Fathers have not failed to inculcate 
this precept, and to require of them, together with the senti- 
ments, the attitude also of adoration, at the moment of their ap- 
proach to the holy table. "Each one must in his turn receive 
the body and blood of the Lord, with the reverence and the fear 
due to the body of such a King." 2 "Approach the chalice, 
says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 3 not stretching out your hands, but 
bending towards the earth in a posture of adoration, to pay your 
homage." St. Ambrose 4 bears testimony to this practice in the 
churches. The following explanation supposes its existence : 
• • We must say, therefore, that his footstool is the earth ; and by 
the earth we must understand the flesh of Christ, which to this 
1/ a/ in- adore in the holy mysteries, and which the apostles adored 
formerly in his person." Saint Augustine, 5 adopting the expla- 
nation of hia master in religious belief, bears equal testimony to 
the fact in these wofds : "No one eating this flesh, without hav- 
ing fust adored it." And on these words of another psalm : 
the rich ones of the earth have eaten and adored, he says : 8 

1 "We must then believe that .T<*sus Christ put himself Into his mouth;" 

ae .1. .1. Rosseau in a tone of triumph against the myBtery of our Eucharist, 

a.- if he had discovered something ae original as sarcastic. He, knew full well 

that venerable antiquity had though! of ilii-- long before his time and thai this 

in >-t ju-i consequence, incomprehensible though it be to human intellect, bad 

in no wis - shaken the relian lue to the word of a God-man in the mind of the 

ihbish 1 Constantinople, of the learned Military of Bethlehem, and of 

all ih" most enlightened characters of the primitive ages. 'Const. A.p. lib. II. 
• Catech. [V. my3tery. * On the Holy Spirit, B. III. 6 On Psalm XCV1II. 
8 Bpist ad. lienor. 



334 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

"The rich ones, that is, the proud have also been admitted to 
the table of Jesus Christ ; they participate ' in his body and 
blood, but they adore only and are not refreshed." and St. 
Ohrysostom : 2 " The magi formerly testified their respect to this 
divine body, when lying in the crib. These Gentiles adored him 
with respectful fear and profound veneration. You behold it not 
in the crib; but on the altar; not in the arms of a woman, but 
in the hands of the priest, and under the wings of the Holy 
Spirit who descends with powerful influence upon the oblations. 

Lotus therefore excite ourselves and with reverential 

awe let us surpass even the magi in the marks of our veneration 
of the body of Christ." 3 

I On Ps. XCVIII. 2 Horn, on I. Cor. 

:! Compare the above instructions and practice with those presented by your 
English Church at the present day to members of its communion. They too evi- 
ct ntly appear in the declaration issued under Edward VI., suppressed afterwards 
by the politic Elizabeth, but again re-established in the form in which it still ap- 
pears at the end of the communion service, under the reign of Charles II., who 
agreed to it, either from weakness or through compulsion, but undoubtedly con- 
t. ary to his own principles and convictions, as may be learned from two docu- 
ments in hLs own hand writing discovered after his death by his brother James II. 
who certifies their authenticity. Now this declaration turns upon the manner 
prescribed of receiving communion on the knees : " It is here declared, that no 
adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread 
and wine there bodily received, or unto any corporal presence of Christ's natural 
lesh and blood. For the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very 
natural substances, and therefore may iwt be adored (for that were idolatry to be 
abhorred of all faithful Christians,) and the natural body and blood of our Sa- 
vimr Christ are in heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of Christ's 
natural body to be at one time in more places than one." 

This declaration is manifestly directed against transubstantiation, since it is 
there said that the bread and wine are bodily received, and preserve their natural 
substance! It attacks, or at least denies any presence of Christ, by the mere fact 
of suppressing adoration ; for, if, while excluding from the Eucharist a corporal 
presence of the natural body of Christ, they had permitted the belief of a sacra- 
mental presence of his glorified and spiritualized body, so far from suppressing, 
they must undoubtedly have united with antiquity in paying adoration, which is 
not less clue to the sacramental presence of the glorified body than to the corporal 
i of the natural body of this divine person. 

How painful to me was the discovery of such expressions attached to your 
rubric actually in force at the present day 1 How I deplore the condition of those, 
who from their earliest youth unconsciously imbibe the poison of such a doctrine ! 
Language has not terms to expose such a declaration in its own disgraceful enor- 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 335 

You are now enabled to observe tbe close connexion between 
our particular and general proofs, tbe ligbt mutually imparted 
by them, and that accordance from wbicb they both derive addi- 
tional strength. In fact, these dogmas, which tbe discipline of 
the Churcb obliged the Christians to conceal from the unbelievers 
and tbe catechumens, were the very same that were disclosed 
and explained to the neophytes previous to their admission to a 
participation of the Eucbarist. 1 Now we have seen that they 
were made acquainted with tbe altar and the sacrifice, the real 
presence and the unbloody immolation of the victim, the change 
of the broad and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, 

mity : it can only be effaced by tears. From the re-publication of this declara- 
tion in 1662, may, in my judgment, be dated the unfortunate epoch, when sacra- 
mentarian opinions began to prevail in the English Church. This Church had for- 
mally rejected them under James I. and Charles I. " The King acknowledges 
Ji -ii- (liri.-t truly present and truly adorable in the Eucharist." And again: 
'■ We adore with St. Ambrose, the flesh of Jesus Christ in these mysteries."* 

" The sounder (and more sensible) protestants, make no hesitation to adore 
Chi i-t in the Eucharist. For in receiving the Eucharist, Christ is to be adored 

wrtH tiuk latum, t 'Tis a monstrous error of the original protestants, who 

maintain that Christ is not to be adored in the Eucharist, except by an inward 
adulation of mind, but not with any outward act of adoration, such as kneeling 
or other such posture of the body. All these do not believe aright of the pre- 
sence of Christ in the Sacrament, he being present there in a wonderful but real 
manner." J 

• ■ I suppose the body and blood of Christ may be adored, wheresoever they arc ; 
and must be adored by a good Christian, where the custom of the Church, which 
a Christian i- obliged to communicate with, requires it. And is not the presence 
thereof in the sacrament of the Eucharist, a just occasion to express on the spot, 
bj that bodily act of adoration, the inward honor, which we always bear towards 

our Lord Jesus Christ, asGod?|| Not to balk that pardon, which hath led 

n e to publish these my sentiments: I do believe that it was so practised (adora- 
tion was paid) ;md done before receiving the symbols in the ancient Church; 
which I maintain, to have been from the beginning the true Church of Christ, 
obliging all to conform to it, in all things within the power of it. § 

1 What Lav.' we in the Churcb c mcealed from the public? The sacraments of 

baptism and the Eucharist, tor our good Works are seen by the Pagans, while 

the sacraments remain concealed from them. Bui ii i.- precisely the thing they do 

to that which strikes them in our conduct. St. Aim. on 

Ps. (111. vol. IV. p. Illo. 

* Bish. Andrews i» bis reply to Card. Bellarmin, in the name of James I. t Bish. 
Forbes, Treati* onto Bach. P.. ll.di. II.soc. 9. J Ibid, sec. 8, || Thorndike, Epu. 
B. III. c. 30. p. 360. (Thorndike, Kj.il. It. 3, c. 3U. p. 351. 



336 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

and consequently the necessity of adoration in receiving them. 
These dogmas are therefore demonstrated to Lave been effectually 
concealed under the discipliue of secrecy. This, good sense 
had led us to suppose, and reasoning had improved our supposi- 
tion into conviction. But now facts speak aloud, and fairly and 
perfectly demonstrate the results of reason and argument. 

And because this instruction of the neophytes, with the ex- 
clusion of the catechumens, is as ancient as Christianity, it fol- 
lows that the doctrines, in which they were instructed previous 
to communion are of an origin equally ancient and apostolical. 
Agatil, the instructions delivered to the neophytes turned upon 
what they were soon to behold upon the altar, on the essential 
part of the liturgy, at which they were for the first time to as- 
sist, on the prayers they were to hear, and on the worship ren- 
dered by the faithful to Jesus Christ. It is then certain that the 
altar, the sacrifice, the victim, its immolation, its presence ef- 
fected by the change of the gifts offered, the adoration of it, all 
dogmas then made known to the neophytes, formed an essential 
part of the liturgy. Thus the chain of our proofs is unbroken 
and complete. The private instructions given to the neophytes, 
plainly shew what was kept concealed from the catechumens and 
unbelievers, as also every thing essential connected with the 
practice of the Christians in the liturgies. Such, Sir, is the 
character of truth; the more it is examined, the more plain an 1 
manifest does it appear : the more it is scrutinised in all its bear- 
ings, the more solid and satisfactory it is found. 

And now, Sir, if those illustrious prelates of the primitive 
Church, a Cyril of Jerusalem or Alexandria, a Chrysostom of 
Constantinople, an Ambrose of Milan, were called to life again, 
and appearing in your religious assemblies, heard your preachers 
declaiming against the doctrine in which they had been nurtured 
full fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and which they themselves 
had most religiously inculcated to their neophytes and their flocks, 
what, let me ask you, would be their language, in such circum- 
stances? What would they say, if, assisting at your public 
service, and finding neither altar nor sacrifice, nor the invocation 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 337 

for the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of 
Jesus Christ, they heard the people publicly cautioned to beware 
how they entertained any sentiment of adoration, seeing that 
the sacrament was but bread and wine, that Christ was not there 
present, but was solely and unceasingly in heaven ? What would 
they say, I ask you ? Would they not be agitated with feelings 
of horror, indignation and pity ? Would they not consider them- 
selves to be among the enemies of Christ, rather than among 
his faithful adorers? Would they not lament their lot in being 
again restored to life? 

But, without insisting any further on the sentiments and feel- 
ings they would unavoidably experience, permit me to make a 
simple statement of my own. I have applied myself to the study 
of the ancient liturgies, and have not failed to compare them 
with the liturgy employed by your Church. I have also paid 
attention to the doctrine of the Fathers respecting the Eucharist, 
and have discovered but too plainly those precise doctrines, which 
your preachers and controversialists so thoughtlessly and unmer- 
cifully assail. How completely are the primitive liturgies and 
your liturgy at variance ! How meager and dry is the latter ! 
How poor and pitiful are the prayers filched from us and left 
mangled and imperfect by the barbarous hand of the awkward 
plagiarist, a monstrous and disgusting spectacle to the admirer 
of pure and venerable antiquity ! What a figure would it present, 
if I were to dwell upon that heterodox and monstrous declaration, 
that terrified the protestants under Elizabeth, and yet was fear- 
lessly and shamelessly appended to your liturgy under Charles 
II ! As for your preachers, their instructions do not even cor- 
Kgpond with the prayers recited by them in what is called the 
Lord's Supper. Whatever appears inexplicable in the words of 
Christ they reject; the mysteries transmitted by the ancient 
Fathers, they impugn, and teach their flocks to do the same — 
they reason and argue where reason, coalescing with authority, 
imperatively sails for their silent acquiescence. In vain does St. 
Hilary ' insist " that we must not pretend to regulate the effects 
1 On the Trinity, B. III. 



338 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of divine power by the ideas of man ; that wisdom consists in 
placing no bounds to the power of God ; that it would be down- 
right folly and impiety to assert what we do assert of the real 
and natural truth of Jesus Christ's presence with us, if he ha I 
not himself declared it to be so." They will have nothing to do 
with St. Hilary, or his doctrine: and instead of uniting with 
him in receiving the declaration of the Lord preferably to the 
information of their senses, they cherish by preference the dic- 
tates of their proud and indocile senses, and reject the assevera- 
tion of the God of truth. In vain does St. Ambrose 1 proclaim, 

"I ask no reason of Jesus Christ Wherefore talk not to 

me of arguments, when faith is required : let dialectic be silen t 
in the schools. Stop your mouth : you may not search into mys- 
teries. We are permitted to know that the Son has been be- 
gotten, but not to require in what manner it was effected." Your 
ministers, far from imposing silence on dialectic in their schools, 
make its voice resound from their pulpits : far from stopping 
their mouths, they declaim against mysteries ; and because they 
cannot comprehend how Christ can be present in the Eucharist, 
they authoritatively pronounce that he is not, and cannot be present 
in the sacred mysteries.* In vain does St. Chrysostom beau- 
tifully advise them as follows : "I receive with submission what 
the scripture says, and pry not into things on which it is silent. 
I understand what it discovers, and have no wish to investigate 
what it veils in obscurity, for the very purpose of deterring me 

from such researches. 3 Why do you labor to fathom that 

which is unfathomable ? Why attempt to comprehend things in- 
comprehensible ? Why be ambitious to penetrate into that which 

is impenetrable? 4 Pretend not to judge of things divine 

by reason, neither attempt to subject them to the laws of nature. 
For by so doing, Nicodemus became incapable of conceiving 
great and sublime truths. We receive the name of faithful, 

' On Abraham. - The manner in which Calvinists receive the Sacrament, is 
precisely the same as that in which Catholics partake of it, by merely assisting 
at mass, when they do not actually communicate. See on this subject the littl ; 
German work of prayem at mas*. 3 Horn, on the Seraphim. * Horn. IV. ou St. 
John. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 339 

that, spurning the lowliness of human imaginations, we may rise 

to the sublimities of faith Let us believe God in all things, 

and gainsay him not, although what he says appears to be con- 
trary to the testimony of our eyes and our reason. Let the au- 
thority of his word supersede the testimony of our eyes and our 
reason. Since therefore his word said, this is my body, let us 
rest satisfied and believe, let us behold it with the eyes of faith." 1 
In vain does St. Ephrem 2 exclaim in language peculiarly appli- 
cable to your teachers. " What "are you about, ye dying mor- 
tals ? Is it not the extreme of folly and temerity, in you who 
are but a compound of dust, to think of fathoming such an abyss? 
Partake of the immaculate body and the blood of the Lord with 
a full and firm faith, and doubt not that you eat the lamb whole 
and entire : for the mysteries of Christ are an immortal fire. 
Beware of rashly searching into them, least they consume you 
when you partake thereof." In vain does Cyril, the great bishop 
and Patriarch of Alexandria, 3 admonish them so long before, 
" that it is not becoming to abandon the ancient tradition of the 
faith, derived from the apostles to our times for mere subtleties 
of such a character, and to subject to an idle curiosity mysteries 
that exceed the powers of our minds; that we must not even 
call them in <picstion, or follow the example of some, who re- 
gardless, of their own peril, have the hardiness to decide upon 
articles "f faith, approving or rejecting them, as seems good to 
themselves. Z* it not more reasonable to commit to God the 
knowledge of his own works, than impiously to carp at what he 

hi- thought proper to do? They indeed had the hardiness 

to ash how, as if they were ignorant that such language was 
blasphemy, &c." ' One might imagine that these great masters 
of antiquity these venerable successors of the apostles, even at 
the distance of bo man; centuries, were thinking of your teachers, 
and were delivering these keen reproaches as a lesson to them in 
person. But y out teachers are deaf to such monitions; they 
will have nothing to do with these charming models of Christian 

i Horn. Will, on St. John. ■Treatise against cariosity in searching into the 
Divine Nature. J On faith. * See this passage in the following Appendix. 



T>40 ON THE CnURCH OF ENGLAND 

eloquence and philosophy ; nothing to do with these illustrious 
ami admirable defences of Jesus Christ: they are desirous of 
taking lessons and examples from the seditious promoters of the 
religious revolution of the sixteenth century — these are their 
masters — these their models. The children have surpassed their 
fathers : without difficulty I concede this superiority to your 
teachers. Yet, in each are discoverable in the main, the same 
presumption, and the same mode of conduct. In your teachers 
are to be found united together the school of the cell of Wittem- 
burg, and of the presbytery of Zurich ; for they attack, at one 
time, the real presence, at another, the change of substance, and 
at all times the adoration, which they even convert into idolatry. 
Thus then their dialectic is unbendingly decisive, their philoso- 
phy earthly, their ideas low, their notions contracted and dry, 
and their declamation as modern as their origin. In their works 
upon the Eucharist, I discover throughout aridity, novelty, and 
therefore falsity of doctrine. Every thing wears the appearance 
and characteristic features of youth : whatever may command 
veneration, awake the recollection of primitive forms, or bear 
t'ie rugged and sacred impress of antiquity, is sought among 
their writings in vain. 

To this you will reply : our teachers and apologists are very 
far from considering themselves as isolated from antiquity : their 
language is that of men connecting us more intimately with it: 
(\en on the Eucharist they claim the authority of the Fathers: 
from them they produce a thousand passages in support of the 
figurative sense ; with these their works are filled, as you must 
of necessity allow. 

All this is very true, Sir, but the great point is to ascertain 
from what writings these passages are extracted, and whether 
they do not claim' with better title an explanation different from 
the one which your ministers have palmed upon them. After 
the passages I have cited, replete as they evidently are with 
Catholic doctrine, it must be acknowledged that the Fathers 
could never have taught elsewhere the protestant doctrine, with- 
out the most palpable contradiction. And rest assured that there 



AND THE REEOEMATIOS IN GENERAL. 341 

is no contradiction to be found in them : that they are true to 
their principles throughout ; and that, if their expressions were 
not always the same, the reason is, because it was both impossi- 
ble aud improper that they should be so. 

For the space of four centuries and more, during which the 
secret discipline was enforced, the Fathers must always have 
measured their expressions respecting the Eucharist according 
to circumstances. When they spoke or wrote exclusively for 
the faithful, they could without reserve explain the mystery: the 
same unrescrvedness must also have attended their first instruc- 
tions to the neophytes. Not so, however, when they preached 
before the catechumens and the non-initiated : not so, when they 
wrote for the public. On such occasions, the apprehension of 
betraying the secret compelled them to adopt obscure and am- 
biguous expressions. Now the far greater portion of their dis- 
courses and writings were produced in these critical and perilous 
circumstances ; consequently they must more frequently have 
expressed themselves with reservedness, than with unrestrained 
freedom. At the same time, these measured expressions, this 
ambigious phraseology, while they withheld from unbelievers 
the adorable mysteries, failed not to discover them to the Chris- 
tians, and were in fact such expressions as naturally presented 
themselves to the mind of the holy Fathers. They sprang from 
the very nature of the Eucharist, which is composed of two parts, 

tin ■ exterior and sensible, the other internal and invisible: 

the former terrestrial, the latter celestial: the one presenting to 
<mr cvs the appearances of bread and wine, the latter proposing. 
to our faith the true and real body and blood of Christ, present, 
bat invisible. Under the former point of view, it is a sacrament, 
a Bign, a symbol ; under the latter, it is the true and real body 
and blood of Jesus Christ, the body that was born of the blessed 
virgin, and was nailed to the cross: the blood that flowed from 
his side, and purifier] the earth. When therefore the Fathers 
had to disguise the mysteries, they had only to confine their ex- 
,n- to tlm exterior appearances, and designate them according 
as thej fell under the cognizance of the senses: and the faithful 
29* 



342 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

instructed in the doctrine, had no difficulty in penetrating the veil, 
and passed on from the sensible appearances to the unseen reality. 
The Fathers spoke the truth — but did not say all the truth. 
They spoke the truth : for, considering the external part alone, 
the Eucharist is bread and wine : it is a type, figure, symbol, 
tiign or sacrament : and we Catholics to this day frequently em- 
ploy the same expressions. They spoke not all the truth : for 
they were silent upon the invisible and principal part, which as 
it must be known to the faithful alone, and not discovered to 
any but the neophytes, was concealed from the rest, and clearly 
developed to them alone. Such, most assuredly was the situa- 
tion of the Fathers for more than four centuries : generally con- 
strained to adopt a mysterious phraseology, occasionally at liberty 
to speak openly to the faithful, and in duty bound, on the great 
solemnities of Easter and "Whitsuntide, to expound them clearly 
and explicitly to the neophytes. The Fathers therefore were 
true to their principles, varying their expressions according to 
circumstances, accommodating themselves to their readers and 
hearers; obscure and reserved to the non-initiated, clear to the 
faithful, and dogmatical to the neophytes. 

After the lapse of many centuries, our age has been distin- 
guished by the expedient resorted to on the part of your contro- 
versialists, who, to prop up their opinions by the authority of 
tradition, have gone in quest of numerous passages in the eccle- 
siastical writings, where the Fathers were evidently constrained 
to speak with reserve, and confine their expressions to what was 
external and sensible in the Eucharist. Had they been honestly 
in search of the doctrine believed and taught in the primitive 
ages, instead of consulting writings in which the Fathers were 
under the necessity of veiling their thoughts, they would have 
preferred those in which their inmost belief was necessarily brought 
to light. Why do not your teachers prefer the society of the 
faithful and the neophytes, and listen with them to the discourses 
delivered, with closed and guarded doors, by Cyril of Jerusalem, 
Ambrose of Milan, Chrysostom of Antioch and Constantinople, 
(Jaudentius of Brescia, &c, &c. ? Why, after the conclusion 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 343 

of the instruction, do they not assist at the liturgy immediately 
succeeding? Why do they not follow the priest to the altar? 
Wherefore not repeat with the pontiff, the admirable supplica- 
t ons addressed to heaven ? Wherefore not advance to the sa- 
cred table together with the faithful, and the recently admitted 
Christians, who for the first time are going to participate in the 
holy mysteries and adore them ? He who at the present time 
seeks to become acquainted with the primitive belief, would 
naturally adopt this method. It is the only rational way of pro- 
ceeding. But your instructors turn to the writings that were 
published to the world, sit down with the catechumens and listen 
to their instructions. Acting thus they meet only with a few 
allusions to the Eucharist, thrown out on the way, or accidently 
introduced by the subject. Assuredly there is nothing here to 
be learned but the passing and trifling information that the Fa- 
thers thought proper to communicate to the initiated ; and it is 
not at all to be wondered at that your instructors should discover 
no additional elucidation of the subject, so long as they persist 
in associating themselves with the catechumens. Let them join 
the initiated, and the bandage will be removed from their eyes, 
and all obscurity will be at an end ; if after this they mingle 
with the catechumens, the enigmatical discourses there delivered 
will be no longer to them a subject of embarrassment. Like 
the rest of the faithful, they will catch the hidden meaning de- 
signedly ooncealed under ambiguous expressions ; and will know 
how to pass from the veil and appearance, to the object that is 
veiled and signified. 1 

'"We call it also a mystery, for another reason; which is, that we believe 
not what we behold, but behold one thing, and believe another: Cor such is the 
nature of our mysteries. I, who am a believer, consider a thing after one inan- 
Uid the unbeliever considers the same thing after another. When lie bears 
,- : . ik of baptism, he considers only the water; but I, not only consider the visi- 
ble matter, bnl much more the purification of the soul effected by the Holy Spirit, 
not judging by the '■y^ of the body of what appears there but by the eyes of the 
soul. J n like manner, when I he;tr iiieiitioueil the body of Jesus Christ, 1 conceive 
what L-' said, in one tray, the unbeliever considers it in another: and as children, 
looking into books, know not the power and signification of the li tiers and under- 
stand not what they see; and as, when an illiterate person receives a letter, 
he sees nothing but ink. and paper, while one who can read, discovers words, 



344 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

If the professors of the protestant religion had pursued this proper 
and simple method, they would not have lost their time aud 
labor in accumulating passages, in which the Fathers referring, 
as behoved them, to nothing more than the sensible part of the 
Eucharist, have described it under the appellations of bread and 
wine, of a sign, a figure, a type, a symbol and a sacrament : ' 
and Catholic polemics would not have been obliged to compose 
so many works to explain the multitude of passages, which never 
will prove any thing else, than that they spoke obscurely of the 
mystery, when it was impossible for them to do otherwise. 2 

I am, however, far from wishing to deal fraudulently with you, 
and take you by surprise : if you still are in doubt and uncer- 
tainty as to the doctrine of the Fathers touching the Eucharist, 
you are perfectly at liberty to communicate this letter and also 
the foregoing ones, to any of your instructors whom you wish to 
consult. I have but one request to make ; which is that, if they 
still pretend to have the Fathers on their side, you will require 
them to produce those writings, in which the Fathers were bound 
to explain themselves clearly and distinctly. Insist upon their 
bringing forward the instructions delivered to the neophytes be- 
tween their baptism and communion. Tell them that this is 
what they are bound to do for you. For, most undoubtedly, 
then was the time to explain in what the mysteries precisely con- 
sisted ; then must the development have been made, of what 
they were to know and what they were to profess. Consequently, 
it is from these dogmatical and elementary documents that we 

communicates with an absent friend, and can convey what answer he pleases in 
reply : so is it with the mysteries : although unbelievers hear them spoken of, they 
do not understand them : but the faithful being instructed by the JToly Spirit, 
know the virtue and eiticacy of what is there concealed." St. Chrysostom, in 
his discourse on the treason of Judas. 

1 These expressions we ourselves are continually employing. They are found 
nsed by those Fathers, who most clearly establish the doctrine of the real presence 
and transubstantiation. Recollect here the remarks we have made together on 
this particular. 

*M. Nicole, among others, has, with unwearied industry, entered upon a 
length 'lied discussion of all the texts objected by his adv irsaries : and has demon- 
strated (the term is not too strong) that they are all reconcileable with the 
Catholic doctrine and that there i.s not a single one that is inconsistent with it. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 345 

now learn to a certainty what the prelates taught, what they had 
learned from their predecessors, and their predecessors from the 
apostles. Of this you cannot be too frequently reminded. Let 
yuur ministers produce, if they can, one single dogmatical in- 
struction of the above description, in which it is declared to the 
neophytes, before their admission to the communion, "that the 
communion is received kneeling for the avoiding all such profana- 
tion and disorder as might otherwise ensue ; for a signification of 
our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ 
therein given : that no adoration is intended or ought to be done, 
either unto the body of Christ, or the sacramental bread or wine, 
for that the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very 
natural substances and ought not to be adored, and the natural 
h<»ily and blood of our Saviour is in heaven and not here : it be- 
ing against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time 
in more places than one." 1 Where will they find that such lan- 
guage was ever employed to the newly-baptised 1 The opposite is 
the feet: in the most distinct terms, it is the adoration of Jesus 
Christ present in an ineffable manner, by a change of nature in 
the gifts offered : it is the same body that was born of a virgin, 
t!i" same blood that was shed upon the cross, to which we are 
hound to pay upon the altar, a still more profound adoration 
than the magi paid to him in the crib; no one receives them 
without having first adored them; and so far is it from being 
sinful to adore him, that we should sin by not adoring him. 

This you have seen — you have heard the catechetical instruc- 
tions given to the neophytes. Others than these I know not of. 
Were there such, or could additional ones be discovered, they 
would not be found to contain the doctrine of your Church. For 
it is impossible that they should have believed and taught at the 
same time the figure and the reality, the change and not the 
imauge of substance; impossible they should have taught that 
the heavenly and eucharistic bread must lie adored, and that this 
adoration would be idolatry. 

i Tli" (rorch and sense of the declaration, concluding your liturgy, are at 
m. inn ; rarianoe with all the ancient liturgies. 



346 ON THE CUURCU OF ENGLAND 

I leave you, Sir, to reflect soberly and candidly on what you 
have learned respecting the important question that fills the last 
five letters. When you have done this, I must request your at- 
tention to a proof of a totally different character. Putting aside 
all discussion of tests and monuments, I undertake to prove that 
the doctrine of the Catholic Church on the Eucharist necessarily 
goes back to the apostles. The argument will be somewhat ab- 
stract and metaphysical : I do not however believe it to be above 
the reach of ordinary capacities : it must in my opinion, suffice 
to convince every reasonable mind. We will then, for a moment, 
forget all that we have discovered from scripture, the secret dis- 
cipline, the liturgies and testimonies of the Fathers, and in place 
of authority we wll listen to reason alone. I start with you from 
a fact, and I say : At whatever point of time you may choose 
to fix upon, at the precise time, if you please, that we are now 
discussing this question, millions of persons, differing in climate, 
customs, nations, governments, prejudices and religious commu- 
aions, all agree, not only in believing in the change of substance 
and the adoration in the Eucharist, but in believing in them as 
dogmas believed and taught in all preceding ages. The above 
proposition demands your most serious attention : reperuse it, 
before you proceed further. You have read the most authentic 
testimonies on the belief of the Greek and Oriential Churches; 1 
You know that, upon these dogmas, they are perfectly in ac- 
cordance with the Latin Churches — It is certain that they, like 
ourselves, believe in these doctrines, as having been invariably 
believed by preceding generations. This being established, I 
pass on : and I maintain that from this fact we of necessity have 
a right to infer nothing less than the apostolicity of these dog- 
mas. In fact, although it be customary to divide the genera- 
tions of men, and count four of them to a century, it is evident 
not withstanding that they are neither distinctly separated nor 
independent of each other, but greatly intermixed, and linked 
one within another, so that a very considerable proportion of 

1 See all these testimonies carefully collected in the Grande Perpetuito du la 
Foi, in Abbe Renaudot et pere Lebran, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 347 

persons existing in any given generation, belong also to the one 
preceding. Whence it follows that a very considerable propor- 
tion of persons existing at any given epoch, are perfectly ac- 
quainted with what was believed and taught in the preceding 
generation, particularly when the dogmas are of great importance, 
connected with daily and general observance, and requiring of 
each individual the most sacred acts of religion, as is the case 
with the dogmas of the Eucharist. If such doctrines are not to 
be retraced to the apostles, there must have been some later pe- 
riod, when, for the first time, they sprang to light, and were 
taught and believed in the world. But at this epoch, when, for 
the first time, mention was made of it, a very great proportion 
of persons then living, knew for certain that not a word had been 
said about it the day before, neither had it been mentioned in 
the preceding generation; they knew perfectly, for example, 
that instead of the reality nothing more than the figure had been 
recognised; instead of the change of substance, nothing but 
broad and wine, instead of adoration, nothing more than a recol- 
lection of spirit. Well then! Sir, supposing that I admit, what, 
nevertheless, is inadmissible, that these same persons consented 
to pass from the figure to the reality, from the substance of the 
bread to that of the body, from recollection to adoration, they 
must have gone over, to say the least, to what they considered a 
novel opinion and a novel practice: but in substituting them for 
the opinion and practice with which they had till then been ac- 
quainted, it is utterly impossible that they should have adopted 
fchera ae having been held and taught during the preceding gen- 
eration - the contrary would be notoriously manifest to all; the 
falsity of the fact too evident to admit such a persuasion. It is 
contrary to nature that so great a proportion of mankind should 
spontaneously or from persuasion, with one impulse, unite in ad- 
mitting as true, wlmt they all positively knew to be false. I 
cannot conceive a man to exist so much the victim of folly as to 
propose t<. his ('•■How Creature to believe that, as the doctrine and 
frith of the year before, which he knows, which they all know, 
was no such thing: and .were an individual found extravagant 



348 ON TIIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

enough to venture upon such an experiment, the nature of things 
and good sense alike forbid us to suppose that success would 
crown his enterprise. And yet, if our dogmas on the Eucharist 
were not derived from the apostles, it would inevitably follow, 
that in some intermediate generation, men began to hold them, 
as the belief of their predecessors, although most notoriously 
they had never been so. There is an absurdity in this hypothe- 
sis that is quite repugnant to our moral constitution. Conse- 
quently, it is proved that th.se doctrines are apostolical, by the 
naked and single fact that so many persons of the present day 
believe them, as having been believed and taught in precediug 
generations, and reaching from our age to that of the apostles 
inclusively. 

We are at length arrived at the termination of this protracted 
dissertation, upon which T entered to justify the decrees of the 
Church upon the Eucharist, and in reply to the difficulties pro- 
posed by }'0u. Our investigation has entirely turned upon the 
simple question of fact, whether the Catholic dogmas were re- 
vealed by Jesus Christ. We have alternately examined the 
scripture and tradition, ;he channels through which revelation is 
transmitted to us ; from each of these we have been supplied with 
clear and abundant proofs of the Catholic doctrine : in each we 
have discovered that the real presence and the change of bread 
and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ were certainly 
revealed by our Lord. You can no longer entertain any reason- 
able doubt concerning the truth of this fact. You must now 
come to a determination : you can no longer be permitted to wa- 
ver and hesitate : your own reason will rise up in judgment 
against you, if you delay for a moment to pay to Christ that 
adoration, which his divine presence in the sacrament of his al- 
tars imperatively requires. 

To this you will reply : ' ' The consequence you draw is just, 
it is inevitable: yet notwithstanding, this simultaneous presence 
in many places, this change of substance, without any external 
indication of the same, and while even the appearances remain 
afterwards the same as before ! how can I submit to this, how 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 349 

can I believe it 2" If you must be enabled to conceive and un- 
derstand, before you are to believe tbe doctrine, I must at once 
give up the task : for I am acquainted with no means of enabling 
you to conceive what I myself am as incapable of conceiving as 
you are. But since when, let me ask you, have men considered 
themselves authorized to deny what is most clearly demonstrated 
by facts, on the ground that in theory it presented obscurity ? 
Since when have they presumed to reject the most solidly estab- 
lished dogma in religion, on the plea of its baffling their concep- 
tions, while in the order of nature we admit, as indeed we ought 
to do, without cavil or doubt, thousands and thousands of effects, 
without the remotest possibility of our conceiving how they have 
been caused in a single instance ? The incomprehensibility of a 
mystery does not diminish its truth and certainty. Now, it is 
both rational and natural for us to yield to manifest proofs, with- 
out presuming to search for a reason. that is hidden from us. Be- 
lieve then and doubt not, that Jesus Christ is really present : 
that the bread and wine no longer subsist, because they are be- 
come his body and blood, believe it, immediately you are con- 
vinced that he himself has so declared. Proceed no further : 
bound your enquiry where the clearness of revelation abandons 
yon and obscurity begins its reign. Leave to God the accom- 
plishment (if what he has been pleased to reveal. He will exe- 
cute his purposes by ways known only to himself. Bo not har- 
rasa your mind by discussing whether these ways are or are not 
a. n- able with the principles of your reason, and waste not your 
time in judging and deciding whether it be that these principles 
must be absolutely false, or that God has ways unknown to men 
by which be op rates bia mysteries, without injury to their prin- 
ciples. 1 Bo, when you find the ministers of the protcstant 
religion dilating with complacency on the difficulties of the Eu- 
chari.-t, and displaying it:- pretended impossibilities, adhere firmly 
to what revelation teaches on this subject. Call to mind the 
w«n'ds of our Saviour, when he promised to give us his body to 
> "Foraathebcax ibove the earth, o are my ways exalted above 
your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts, saith the I I," fauiaa 



350 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

eat, and his blood to drink, and when he performed his promise, 
on the eve of his passion. Call to mind the doctrine and the 
belief of the apostles, and the first Christians; the discipline, 
coeval with Christianity, respecting the secrecy that hid these 
mysterious dogmas in the breasts of the faithful : call to mind 
the liturgies of the fifth age, all of which express the same dog- 
mas in glowing terms, and whose uniformity proclaims their 
apostolical descent : call to mind that the primative Fathers de- 
veloped the same belief with the greatest clearness when they 
spoke free and unrestrained in presence of the faithful alone, or 
when they were instructing the neophytes in what it was neces- 
sary for them to know before being admitted to partake of the 
holy communion : think, in fine, of the moral impossibility of 
our belief being ever established, such as it now exists, unless it 
be supposed to derive its origin from Jesus Christ himself. 

All the proofs, attesting this point of revelation are most cer- 
tain : the metaphysical arguments brought forward against them 
are far from being so, they leave them totally untouched. The 
former are within the comprehension of our minds : the latter are 
far beyond the limits of human intelligence. We cannot there- 
fore, without overthrowing the laws of good sense, throw aside 
plain and palpable proofs, to cling to conceptions that, to say the 
least of them, are founded on no certainty and are hazardous in 
the extreme. If, however, such metaphysical difficulties should 
rise up in our imagination, they must be driven away: proofs 
built upon facts must be introduced into their place : on 6uch 
occasions, raise up your heart to heaven, whence all revelation is 
derived ; take refuge under the Divine Majesty which veils its 
own mystery, and forbids you to examine it with too curious an 
eye : place all your confidence in him who proposes it to you, 
and, at the moment of communion, cry out to him with St. Peter, 
with the apostles and the Christians of all ages : Yea, Lord, I 
believe that thou art the Son of the living God, and that thou 
hast the words of eternal life. This is the clear and luminous 
side of the column : fix your eyes upon this together with the 
chosen people of God, and you cannot fail of being secure : 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 351 

whereas you will be infallibly lost like the Egyptians, if you 
place yourself with theui on the side that diffuses nothing but 
darkness and uncertainty. This mixture of light and darkness, 
which is equally fuuud in the order of nature as in religion, was 
no doubt intended for the trial of our faith during the days of 
our pilgrimage : with our earthly pilgrimage it will terminate : 
then shall the veil be withdrawn and the truth be clearly laid 
open to our eyes : then to our astonishment shall we find the 
simplicity of all that, which at present confounds and defies the 
ingenuity and imagination of man. 

In the mean time, thus let us argue the point : it would no 
doubt be a madness to believe, on the testimony of man, what 
we do believe respecting the Eucharist : but there would be a 
thousand times more madness in refusing to believe it on the 
positive testimony of our Saviour. You confess with us his di- 
vinity demonstrated by all his works: you acknowledge with us 
in Jesus Christ the God who created the universe, who rules na- 
ture, and who "hath done whatever he pleased in heaven, on 
earth, in the sea and in all the depths." 1 It would be highly 
unreasonable to oppose our weak understanding to his divine 
word and to place more reliance on our limited and ever erring 
reason than on his almighty power and infinite wisdom. 2 

1 Psalm v. 6. 
2 Hear the same language from the mouth of one of your own divines : " We con- 
fess with tli'' holy Fathers that the manner of Christ's presence is as inaccessable 
to our thoughts as to our language ; that is, we confess, that it is not to be fathomed 
by human reason, but must be believed by faith. However incredible it may ap- 
p i. i" as that, ai bo immense a distance, the flesh of .lesus Christ should come 
down to ns and become our food, it must never be forgotten how much the power 
of tii.- Holy Spirit surpasses our comprehension, and how foolish it would be to 
think of measuring his immensity by our weak understandings. Let faith, thru, 
admit what reason cannot conceive."* 

•• <io'l iii'Mi-nat •, how thou canst give us thy flesh to eat and thy blood to 

drink! How thy flesh is meat indeed I How thou who art in heaven, lex peeseh r 

. m.i .-.■'. I can by no means explain. But I firmly believe it ael, ue- 

iioi- u\>r smii ii. I firmly rely on thy love, and on thy omnipotence to 

make good thy words; though th* manner of doing it, I cannot oompreht nd. v | 

In, ifi li"|i of Durham, Hist of Tmnsubstantiation, p. 38, died in 1672, aged 
77. f Bishop K.'-m\-, Exposition, licensed anno 168. The above passage isquotod train 
Dr. Ilawardeu's True Church of Christ, fart III. p. M9, 



ON THE CHIIICH OF ENGLAND 



APPENDIX. 



Testimonies of the Fathers. 



Saint Ignatius,* the disciple and successor of St. Peter in the see of Antioeh, 
speaking of certain heretics, who denied the reality of the body of Christ, says: 
"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not acknowl- 
the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered 
for our sins, and which the Father by his goodness resuscitated." Ejj. ad Smi/rn. 
p. 36. T. 11. P. P. Ape*. Avutekedami, 1724. 

Justin, f in his apology to the Emperor Antoninus, expresses himself as fol- 
lows: "Our prayers being finished, we embrace one another with the kiss of 
peace. Then to him who presides over the brethern is presented bread, and wine 
tempered with water; having received which, he gives glory to the Father of 
all things in the name of the Son and the Holy Ghost, and returns thanks, in 
many prayers, that he has been deemed worthy of these gifts. These offices be- 
ing duly performed, the whole assembly, in acclamation, answers, Amen ; when 
the ministers, whom we call deacons, distribute to each one present a portion of 
the blessed bread, and the wine and water. Some is also taken to the absent. 
This food we call the Eucharist, of which they alone are allowed to partake, who 
believe the doctrines taught by us, and have been regenerated by water for the 
remission of sin, and who live as Christ ordained. For we do not take these 
gifts as common bread and common drink; but as Jesus Christ, our Saviour, 
made man by the word of God, took flesh and blood for our salvation: in the 
sane manner, we have been taught, that the food which has been blessed by the 
prayer of the words which he spoke, and by which our blood and flesh, in the 
change, are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus incarnate. The apos- 
tl-s, in the commentaries written by them, which are called Gospels, have de- 
livered that Jesus so commanded, when taking bread, having given thanks, he 
said: Do this in remembrance of me. Thi* w my body. In like manner, taking 
tli ! cup, and giving thanks, he said : This is my blood: and that he distributed 
li .th to them only. If you find this reasonable, respect it : if you think it im- 
pertinent, despise it: but do not on that account condemn to death people who 
have dune no evil. For we declare to you that you will not escape the judgment 
of God, if you persevere in this injustice. For our parts, we say : God's will be 
done." ApoL I. p. 95. 96. 97. Edit. Londini, an. 17? 1. 

Ircmeus, in his fourth book against heresies, ch. XVII. al. 32. speaks thus; 
* Suffered Martyrdom in 108. t Martyred in 163. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 606 

" Jesus Christ, having taken what of its own nature was bread, blessed and gave 
thanks saying: This U my body: and, in the same manner, having taken the 
chalice, he confessed that it was hi* blood: he taught the new oblation of his 
Testament: the Church has received it from the apostles and oilers it to God 
throughout the world." You shall now read Doctor Grabe's commentary on 
these words. " It is certain that Irenreus and all the Fathers whose writings we 
possess, whether contemporary with the apostles or their immediate successors, 
have held the Eucharist to be the sacrifice of the new law. Now, that this doc- 
trine, and this practice, was not that of any particular Church or of any private 
divine, but that it was the doctrine, and the practice of the universal Church, 
which it had received from the apostles, and the apostles from Jesus Christ, is 
what we are taught by Iremeus in express terms, and before him by Justin the 
Martyr, whose testimonies, as well as those of St. Ignatius, Tertulliau, St. Cyril 
and others, have been so often quoted, not only by the adherents of the pope, but 
also by the most learned protectants, thattheree is no need of repeating them. 
'1 here would scarcely have been the least doubt that this doctrine respecting the 
sacrifice of the Eucharist was derived from the apostles and that it consequently 
claimed our faith and attachment, should there even have not been found a single 
word for it in the writings of the prophets or the apostles. For the precept of 
St. Caul* is general: Bretbern, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you 
have learned, whether by word, or by our epistles. But a sufficient number of 
passages from scripture have been adduced, after Irenajus and the other Fathers, 
by modern divines, not only by those attached to the pope, but by protestants, 
a ni above all by the divines of the Church of England, from among whom I 
shall name only one, but one, eminent for learning and piety, Joseph Mede,f who 
in a treatise written in English, on the sacrifice of the Christian law, has proved 
and established this point in the clearest manner. And not only am I willingly of 
his opinion, but I moreover subscribe with all my heart to the wish he has cx- 

p ed at the end of the eighth chapter; and since so many learned and pious 

persons among protestants have recognized the true doctrine of the apostolic 
Church and shewn their contempt tor Luther and Calvin, I earnestly wish with 
\| rde, that these sacred liturgical formularies, in which sacrifice is offered to God, 
and which have been unadvisedly banished from their assemblies, may be again 
In mi-lit into use among us, that we may render to the divine Majesty the supreme 
honor we owe it. 

I i-ducii- again, in Book IV. against heresies, ch. XXXIV. thus refutes certain 
heretics who denied that Christ was the Son of the Creator: "How can these 
prove, thai the bread over which the words of thanksgiving have been pronounced 
w the body of their Lord, and the cup his blood, while they do not admit that 
h • i- the Son, that is, the Word, of the Creator of the world?" Attend now to 
what your countryman, the celebrated Fisher, bishop of Rochester, has written 
upon these words : "In tic first words, [renaeus affirms as most certain, that the 
bread and wine are the bodj and blood of the Lord. It appears also, that the 
heretics, against whom he was writing,* acknowledged that they- admitted tin; 
and iliit. resting upon this their acknowledgment, he reasoned against 
th .11 at follows: How cotue you to believe, that the bread, alter- the thanksgiv- 

'II.Thessal It 11. t ProfeSSQJ of the Greek hiuguugeal. Cambridge ; died ill 1uj8. 



0._>4 ON THE C1IU11CH OF ENGLAND 

the body of our Lord, and the chalice his blood, if at tin- same time you 
deny that your Lord is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is to say, the 
Word itself, by virtue of which the vine fructifies, and produces the grave; tbe 

earth, grass, corn and bread? For if the Christ, as you imagine, had an ad- 
versary in the Creator of all things, he never would have chosen, from amongst 
created things, ''bread and wine, from which to form bis body and blood."* I 
could here adduce two other passages from the same [renaros;f but the great 
number of those I have still to produce, admonish me to proceed to another 
authority. 

Origen,}: explaining the words of the royol prophet, adore his footstool , ex- 
presses himself thus : '-By footstool some suppose that we are to understand 
the body .of Christ, because he received it from the earth, and that this body 
ought to be adored, because of Christ. Therefore now the Christ himself claims 
our adoration, because of the Word of God which is in him."|| 

The same Father) notwithstanding the reserve with which he spoke of the 
mysteries to pagans, ventures to tell Celsus, that the breads offered become by 
prayer a holy body. ''We, who study to please the Creator of all things with 
prayers and giving of thanks for benefits received, eat of the breads that are of- 
fered, which by prayer are made a holy body. By this, they who partake of it 
wiih a pure spirit, are rendered more holy."§ 

When treating of the sacrifices of the old law, he writes as follows!!" in allusion 
to the sacrifice of the new law: "Attach not so much importance to the blood 
of animals; but rather make yourselves acquainted with the blood of the Word, 
and hear what he himself says: This is my Mood. He who is imbued with the 
knowledge of the mysteries discerns the body and blood of the Word-God. We 
will not therefore dwell upon things known to the initiated, and which must be 
kept concealed from the uninitiated.'' 

•■When you receive the sacred and incorruptible food, when you taste Hie 
bread and the cup of life, you eat and drink the body mid blood <;/' the Lord: then 
the Lord enters under your roof. You ought therefore to humble yourself, and 
to exclaim with the centurion: "Lord, 1 am not worthy that thou shouldst enter 
under my roof." These words are still used by the Church when administering 
the holy Communion. 

M. Cyprian** primate of Africa, at the approach of a fresh persecution, wrote 
thus:tf "Let us prepare ourselves for the combat, andthiukof nothing but how 
we may obtain the glory and the crown of a life eternal, by confessing the Lord. 

The approaching combat will be more severe and cruel than ever : by an 

unshaken faith must the soldiers of Christ prepare themselves, reflecting that they 
d ink daily the chalice •;/' his blood, to the end that they may be the better dis- 
posed to shed their blood for Christ " 

He severely condemns the unbecoming conduct of a Christian, who on leaving 
the Church went to the theatre: "Scarcely dismissed from the temple of the 

* On the Ewharist, ch. XX. and XXI. against (Ecolampadius. — tBook V. ch. II. 
No. 3— JBorn in 1?5, died in 258.— 1| Comment, on Ps. XCVUI— § Against Ceteus, 
Book, \ [II.—" Horn. IX-on Levit., No. 10 •" Died, 25S.— ffEp. LVI. an exhortation 

U> martyrdom. 



A XI) THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 3oO 

Lord, and bearing the Eucharist still in his bosom, the wretched man walked off 
to the theatre, carrying with him the sacred body of Jesus Christ.* 

" We are to put on the breastplate of justice, that our heart may be defended 

against the shafts of the enemy Let us fortify our eyes, that they may hot rest 

upon these detestable idols ; let us fortify our mouth, that our victorious tongue 
may confess the Lord and his Christ; let us aim our hand with the spiritual 
sword, that it may intrepidly repel these fatal sacrifices ; and that, at the remem- 
brance of the Eucharist, the hand which has received the body of the Lord, may 
embrace and clasp its God, being assured of soon receiving from him the reward 
of a heavenly crown." 

To prepare those for martyrdom, who, having fallen in the persecution, were 
desirous of returning to their duty, St. Cyprian f proposes that they should be 
admitted to communion sooner than the laws of public penance would otherwise 
have allowed. 

•• Thus," .-ays he, "it is necessary to grant them the peace, that being exhorted 
and animated to the combat, they may be sent fortified and protected by the 
body fiml blood of Jesus Christ, and not naked and unarmed; for the Eucharist 
was instituted to be the support of those who receive it." 

"The sacrifice that we offer is the passion of our Lord.":}: 

'•Who ever was with better title priest of the Most High, than our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who offered sacrifice to God his Father? The sacrifice that he offered, is 
the same as the sacrifice of Melchiscdech, bread and wine, that is to say, his body 
and blood." \\ 

"The great honor and glory of our Episcopacy is to have given the peace 
(communion) to the Martyrs; and to celebrate daily as priests the sacrifice of 
God, to prepare fur him his victims. "§ 

St. DionysiusH archbishop of Alexandria, being unable, on account of his 
great age, to comply with the argent request of the bishops, that he would attend 
ai the council of Antioch, wrote to Paul of Samosata a Letter which Eui bius 
I i veil, and which St. Jerom most highly commends. 

In it we discover the respect entertained by this great and holy Father for the 
divine and incorruptible blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, which he com- 
pared to the 11"1\ Spirit, whereas Paul pretended, that it was corruptible, ba- 
eaut • J.-u- < Ihl i-t had said; "Take it, and divide it among you." •• By this 

ineffable mysterj ," adds he, "which Christ calls the new Testament he gives him- 
self to us in the mysterious supper. Formerly, the flesh of irrational animals 

was placed upon tin altar now it is no longer so; but the Lord himself, the 

Saviour and the God of Israel, has said, He that eateth me, shall live by me 

.Now if we cannot saj thai the Holy Ghost is corruptible, although he has de- 
scended and been distributed among many, we must reason in the same manner 
expecting t In life-giving blood of Jesus Christ. And thus do we demonstrate to 
Paul, that the mod taered blood of Jesos Christ our God is not corruptible; that 
if it not the blood of a mortal man like ourselves, but of the true God, who is a 
torrent of delights to tho.-e who have the happiness to partake of it." 
"What a crime," cries out FirmUian,** bishop of Cajsarea, is committed by 
• Book on tienirie.il entertainments.— t Epist. I, IV.— {Ep. LXII.to Cecilius.— 1| Ep. 
1,1 1 1. 10 i v- in u .. j Ep, CIV. 1! I'i. d, Jio. ■-' Ep. to .St. Cyprian. 



356 ON THE CHUBCH OF ENGLAND 

those who admit and those who arc admitted, when they have the presumption to 
receive the Holy Communion, before they have declared their sins, and washed 
away their stains in the bath of the Church, impiously touching the body and the 
blood of the Lord, since it is written : He that shall eat this bread, or drink the 
cliiilice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the 
Lordl" 

The following testimony must be considered as belonging both to the third and 
fourth centuries: it is the testimony of three hundred and eighteen bishops; * or 
to speak more correctly, of the universal Church, because it emanates from the 
first general council. "We must not confine our attention to the bread and the 
chalice offered on the sacred table ; but elevating our mind, let us discover by 
laith this Lamb of God lying on this sacred table, taking away the sins of the 
world, and immolated bj the priests in an unbloody manner ; and when we truly 
his precious body and blood, let us consider them as the pledges of our 
resurrection." 

"Saint James, f bishop of Xisibis, who attended at the general council of Nice, 
speaks as follows : " Our Saviour washed the feet of his disciples.... giving thein 
thereby a noble example of humility.... Having washed the feet of his disciples, he 
sat down again to table, and then gave them his body and blood." 

"There is a door to thy house, and it is the temple of God. It would certainly 
be a crime, man, to allow filth and dirt to come through the door wJu re thy 
king enter*. .Beware of every impure word, and then take the body and Hood of 
Jesus Christ. Guard thy mouth with circumspection, remembering that thy Icing 
has entered therein. Thou canst no longer be permitted, man, to let indecent 
expressions escape from thy mouth. "J 

Eusebius || bishop of Emessa, and dieiple of Eusebius of Ca>sarea, speaks thus 
of the Eucharistic blood, in allusion to the passage of Exodus. They shall take 

the blood of the lamb, and sprinkle both the door posts : They sprinkle the 

blood of the lamb upon both the posts, who receive it with both their month and 
heart. They who receive unworthily, or who receiving do not believe it to be 

the blood of Christ, sprinkle the blood upon one post only As for us, receiving 

it with both our month and heart, let vs be persuaded, that it is the blood of Christ : 
let us place it upon both posts, by receiving it into our bodies and our souls." 

Let us hear what St. Hilary says : § "If the won/, truly, was made flesh, and 
tee, truly, receive this uord for our food : how can he be thought not to duell 
naturally in us, who assumed the nature of our flesh inseparably united to him, 
and communicates, in the sacrament, that nature to us? For thus, we are all 
one: because the Father is in Christ, and Christ in us.... We are not to speak of 
h avenly things as we do of human Of the Saturn! verity of Christ in us, what- 
ever tee speak ire sjieah foolishly and wickedly, unless we learn it of him ; for it is 
he that said: My flesh is meat ind<-,d, and my blood is drink indeed. There is no 
place left to doubt of the truth of Christ's flesh and blood, for now, by the de- 
claration of the Lord himself and according to our belief, it is truly flesh, and 

* In the Acts of the Council of Nice, 325. fDied in 3">0, Discourse on the Pasch. 
tin. G. ± Sermon on Fasti, ig. || Died in 3:>'J, Horn. II. on the Pasch. §Died in 367, 
li. VI II. on the Trinity. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL,. 357 

truly blood. But he himself attests how we are in him by the sacramental com- 
munication of his body and blood: And the world, says he, *ee« me not, but you 
nee me, because I lire and yon shall lire : for lam in my Father, and you are in 
me, and lam in you. (John XIV. 19, 20.) If he wished the uuity of will alone 
to be understood, why should he establish a certain order and progression in the 
formation of it ; but that he should be in the Father, by the nature of the di- 
vinity ; we in him, by his corporal birth, and he in us, by the sacramental 
■i;. ret tv." 

St. Basil * has already been cited in the liturgy which bears his name among 
the Greeks. We have seen that he composed various magnificent prayers for 
the altar, and that they were in great request in the East, and affixed to the 
canon in a great number of Churches. 

St. Kphrcm.f deacon of Edes.-a, whose life was written by St. Gregory of 
Nyssa, brother of St. Basil, expresses himself in the following remarkable man- 
n •!• : '• Sedulously consider all these things, and believe that they are true, as 
they are related. For if you view them not with the eyes of faith, you cannot 
rise from the earth to heaven, nor in spirit behold what Christ suffered. When 
of faith is clearly open, it contemplates, in a pure light, the lamb of God, 
who was immolated for us, and who gave us his body for our food to the remis- 
BtQB nf our sins. This same eye of faith manifestly beholds the Lord, eating his 
body and drinking his blood, and indulges no curious inquiry You be- 
lieve that Christ, the Son of God, for you was born in the flesh. Then why do 
irch into what is inscrutable? Doing this, you prove your curiosity, not 
your faith. Believe then, and with a firm faith receive the body and blood of 
our Lord I that you cat the Lamb itself whole and entire. For the 
mysteries of Christ are an immortal fire. Beware how you rashly attempt to 
fathom them, lest, whilst you are a partaker, you be consumed by them. Abra- 
ha ii placed earthly food before celestial spirits, (Gen. XVII.) of which they 
ate. Thi- teas wonderful. But what Christ has done for us greatly exceeds this, 
and transcends all speech, and all conception. To us, that are in the flesh ; he 
ha3 given to eat /"'- body ><ml blood. Myself incapable of comprehending the 
mysteries of God, I dare not proceed; and should I attempt it, I should shew 
only my rashness." 

thood, raising itself boldly from earth to heaven, ascends to the 
throne of the Almighty, and supplicates the King of mercies, that his Holy Spirit 
■ d, at the game ti and sanctify the gifts offered on the earth. "X 

St. Optatus, ]| bishop of Milevum in Africa, reproaches the Donatists, as fol- 
lows: "What i- bo outrageous as to break, to erase, and to remove the altars of 
Go I, on which you yourselves made offerings? On them the vows of the people 
QBd the members of Christ were borne; there the Almighty was invoked, and 
the Holy Spirit descended: and from them the faithful received the pledge of 

a) irnal life, the buckler of faith, ami the hope of resurrection? For what 

ill ir, bul the ■ sal of the body and blood of Jesus Christ? What offence 

hi 1 Christ given, whose body and Mood, at certain times, do there dwell? 

This enormous impiety was doubled, whilst you broke also the chalices, which 

• Died in 578. t Died ln378. De. Nat. D< /. T. III. p. 168, Edit. Vo.ssii. J Discourse 
on the Prie thood. || Died in 3B0, Contra Paimen, L. IV. p. 91, 9:2, 93. Parisiis 1701). 



358 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

contained the blood of Christ: Christi sanguinis ■portntorei. abominable 

.' unheard of impiety? You have imitat-fl the Jews: they pierced the 

1. >dy of Jesus Chris) upon the cross; and you have struck him upon the altar." 

St. Cyril, * of Jerusalem, has left us eighteen catechetical discourses for the 
instruction of the catechumens, and five others addressed to the newly-baptised: 
tli y appear to have been composed about the year IJ47, whilst he was yet a priest. 
II sar how he addressed the neophytesf when explaining the liturgy : "You have 
s 'en the deacon present to the officiating priest, and to the attendant priests, 

water to wash their hands After that, the officiating priest says aloud; 

Raise up your hearts ; for it is at this awful moment particularly that you should 
raise up your hearts to God, and have them disengaged from all that is earthly... 
At tlnv- e words of the priest you answer; We have our hearts raised up to the 
Lord; and by this you profess to do what he requires. The priest continues; 

J- t us give thanks to the Lord You answer; It is right and just to grre 

thanks to the Lord We then recite that sacred hymn which the seraphim 

chant in heaven in honor of the three Divine Persons, that by this celestial 
psalmody, we may communicate with the angelic host, and that, being more and 
more sanctified by these spiritual canticles, we may with greater purity entreat 
1 and kind a God to send down the Holy Spirit on the things that are of- 
fered, and to make the bread become the body of Jesus Christ, and the trim his 
blood. For all that receives the impression of the Holy Spirit is sanctified and 
changed into another substance. Now, when the spiritual sacrifice is ended, and 
this unbloody worship rendered to God by means of the host of expiation is com- 
pl ited, we pray for the peace of all the Churches, for the tranquillity of the world, 
for kings and their armies, and for their allies, for the afflicted, in a word for all, 
who stand in need of the Divine assistance." (Here comes the prayer for the 
dead, which I will introduce in another place.) "You say afterwards : Our 
Father, who art in heaven." 

"After this, you hear the voice of the chanter, by a melodious and divine 
canticle, invites you to the communion of the sacred mysteries, saying these 
words : Taste and see how sweet is the Lord. Do you think that you are com- 
manded to make this discovery by the mere taste of the palate? In no wise; 
but by the testimony of faith, which is certain and leaves no room for doubt. 
For, when you communicate, you are not commanded to taste the bread and wine, 
but to take the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. 

" Now, when you approach to communicate, you must not come with your 
hands stretched out, or your fingers open: but your left hand supporting your 
right hand, which is to hold so great a king, receive the body of Jesus Christ in 
the hollow of that hand, saying, Amen. Then, having carefully sanctified your 
eyes by the touch of the sacred and venerable body, you will communicate by 
eating it. But, be very careful that nothing falls, considering the loss of the 
smallest particle as if you should lose a member of your body. Wereyou to re- 
c ive ingots of gold, how anxiously would you guard them, that nothing might 
b lost? What precaution ought you not to take that not the smallest part be 
lost of that which is infinitely more precious and dear to us than gold or 
diamonds. 

* Elected bishop in 350, died in 366. t Catech. IV. Mystag. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 359 

"After having thus communicated of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, ap- 
proach to the chalice of the blood, not stretching; out jour hands, but bowing 
down in the attitude of homage and adoration, and saying : Amen. Then sanc- 
tity yourselves by the touch of the blood of Jesus Chris.t which you receive : and 
Whilst your lips are still moistened with it, wipe them with your hand and apply 
it immediately to your eyes, your forehead and the various organs of your senses, 
to consecrate them. Then, till the priest begins the last prayer, thank God, that 
he has made you worthy to participate in mysteries so sublime and elevated." * 

St. Gregory, t bishop of Xyssa, brother of the celebrated St. Basil, and who, 
from his great age as well as from his learning, was called the Father of the Fa- 
thers, explains the change of the bread and wine in the Eucharist : "It is with 
reason then that I believe that the bread, being sanctified by the word of God, 
ia transformed ami changed into the body of the Word-God : for this bread is 
sanctified, as says the apostle, by the word of God and by prayer, not in such 
a manner, that by eating and drinking it becomes the body of the Word ; but it 
ged instantaneously into the body by the word, as the Word has said, 
This is my body." He concludes this chapter by observing, that "it is by virtue 
of the benediction, that the nature of the visible species is changed into his body : 
Virtute benedictionis in Mud transelementata eorum quce apparent natttra." 

He establishes in general that the sacred things are very different from what 
they were before the consecration: this he shews by many examples; among 
others, by that of the Eucharist bread, of which he speaks thus: " The bread 
is, at first, but common bread : but when it has been sanctified, it is called, and 
ie made the body of Christ." % 

Bt. Ambrose || the illustrious bishop of Milan, shall now display in its full light 
the doctrine of the Church respecting the adoration of Jesus Christ in the Eu- 
charist : '• Mary adored Jesus Christ, the apostles also adored him and even the 
augnls adored him, as it is written: Let all the angels of God adore him. Now 
they adore not only his divinity, but also the foot-stool under his feet, because it is 
holy. And if heretics deny that adoration should be paid to the mysteries of the 
incarnation of Jesus Christ they may read in the scripture, that the 

* This general description of the liturgy of St. James proves the conformity of our 

liturgy with his. For in this we find the Sursum corda the Habemus ad Dominum, 

the Gratia* ngamun iJomino Deo nostro, the Dignum ctjuslum est, the Sanctus, the 

]'■■■/, , nosier, and even the pouring of water upon the fingers of the priest ; in it we 

find the altar, the unbloody sacrifice, the oblation of the victim, the invocation for 

the real presence by the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood, tlie 

prayer for the dead, the invocation of saints, and at the time of communion, the 

adoration. How consoling and delightful is it to find ourselves, after so many ages, 

still in the track of primitive and apostolical Christianity, and to feel, that we still 

proceed in the same order and the same worhip, and that the dogmas which we pro- 

e precisely the same as those which, fifteen hundred years ago, were pro 

fessed by the first and tin 1,10,1 ancient of all Churches ! Therefore, the unfortunate 

authors of this insipid reformation must have Binned equally against good taste as 

I faith, when, separating themselves from the saints reigning in heaven, the 

in purgatory, and tin- tirst christians on the earth, the] retrenched 

from tin' liturg) all that WAS most moving, most sublime and most ancient, t Died 

about the year 400. Caieck. Disc. (WW 11. {Discourse on the baptism of Jesus 
Christ. II Hied in 3U7. B. 117, on Hit lluly Spirit, Ch. XII. 



360 ON THE CHURCII OP ENGLAND 

apostles also adored him, after he had risen again in a glorified body. For we 
must not consider this footstool according to the ordinary custom of man : and 
again we are to adore only God. It is then rather difficult to know what must 
be done in these circumstances; and for this reason, it v, ill be necessary mote 
particularly to examine what is this toot-stool of the Lord; for we read in an- 
other part: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my foot-stool. Now, we 
must not adore the earth, because it is but a creature ; we should, however ex- 
amine whether the earth, which the prophet requires us to adore, be not that 
earth, with which the Lord Jesus clothed himself in his incarnation. We must 
therefore say, that the foot-stool is the earth, and by this earth we must under- 
stand the very iiesh of Jesus Christ, which to this day we adore in our sacred mys- 
teries, and which the apostles formerly adored in his person, as we have already 
said. For Jesus Christ is not divided, but is indivisible: and whilst they adored 
hi.n as the Son of God, they did not disown him for the Son of Mary." 

"Although we may be insignificant of ourselves," says this holy Archbishop 
elsewheie speaking of himself and the priests, " we cease not to be venerable, on 
account of the sacrifice which we oiler ; for, although it seems as if it were not 
Jesus Christ who now oflers himself, it nevertheless is he who is offered upon 
the earth, every time that his body is offered, or lather it is manifest, that it is 
lie who offers in us, because it is his word that sanctifies the sacrifice which we 
offer." * 

"And I wish that when we incense the altars and offer up the sacrifice, the 
angels would assist, or rather manifest their presence; for you are not to doubt 
that the angels are present when Jesus Christ is present, and is immolated." f 

" Neither Caiphas nor Pilate had the power to deprive us of Jesus Christ, nor 
can we fast as if we had lost our spouse, because we have Jesus Christ ; and are 
nourished by his flesh and blood." % 

In his fourteenth epistle he testifies that he daily renewed the sacrifice ; and in 
his commentary on the epistle of the Hebrews, he says: "Do we not make an 
ott'oi ing every day ? and he adds, that where this offering was not made every 
dav, it would be necessary to make it at least twice a week. 

Here I will add what is said by the Author of the books on the sacraments, 
because this work was for a long time attributed to St. Ambrose, is visibly formed 
upon the doctrine of this bishop, and cannot possibly be thrown back later than 
the sixth century. Attend now to his language upon the Eucharist; || "You 
will perhaps say : It is common bread : but this bread is bread before the words 
of the sacrament. After the consecration, from bread that it was, it becomes the 
fle<h of Jesus Christ. This then is what we have to prove. How is it possible 
that this bread, which was bread, should become the body of Jesus Christ? iiy 
the consecration. But by what words is this consecration accomplished? Iiy 
the words of our Lord Jesus. For, whatever other words are said, are either the 
praises of God, or prayers for the people, for princes, or individuals. When we 
come to the consecration of the adorable sacrament, then the priest no [01 r 

makes use of his own words, but of the words of Jesus Christ But what then 

is the word of Christ ? The same, by which all things were made. The Lord 
commanded, and the heavens were made: he commanded, and the earth was 

* On Pa. t On St. Luke, B. I. % B. V. on the Gospel, v. || B. IV. iv. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 3G1 

made : he commanded, and the seas were made If then the word of the Lord 

Jesus had power to give existence to what was not before, how much more will it 
have power to make that, which was, still exist and pass into another substance I 
The heavens w.re nut, the sea was not, the earth was not: but hear his word : 
lie spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. Thus, 
t<> reply to your difficulty, before consecration the bod}' of Christ was not there; 
but after consecration, I tell you that it is there. He spoke, and it was done ; he 
commanded, and it was formed;" Here the author relates, like St. Ambrose, the 
miracles of Moses, Elias, Eliseus and of the Nativity, and concludes : "Thus you 
have learned, that the bread becomes the body of Christ : you have learned, that 
wine and water are mixed in the chalice, and that they become his blood by the 

consecration of the heavenly word." He says afterwards : "You will tell me 

perhaps: I see no appearance of blood The Lord assures us himself, that we 

his body and his blood : ought ue then to doubt of the truth of his words, 
and call in question his testimony'.'" 

St. Epiphanius,* metropolitan of Salamis in Cyprus, an ancient Church founded 
!■■ St. Barnabas, a native of the Island, wishing to prove that we must reject the 
allegories of Origen, and believe things, although we see not the reason for be- 
lieving them, adduces the example of the Eucharist: "We see," says he,f "that 
the Lord took a thing into his hands, as we read in the Gospel, that he rose up 
from table, and that he took these things, and that having given thanks he said: 
This is a certain thing. % However, we see that this thing is neither equal nor 
like to the image of the flesh that he has taken, any more than it is like to the 
divinity, which cannot be seen, or to the figure or shape of his members. Now, 
this tiling is round, and as for sense or feeling it has none: and nevertheless, by 
an effect of his grace, he has been pleased to declare, that this was a certain 
thing, and there is no one but belit ves in his words : and he who believes not ac- 
cording as he himself has said, is fallen from grace and salvation." 

This passage i- borrowed and explained by the ancient Author of the dialogues, 
attributed to Cesarius,|| brother of St. Gregory BTazianzen, and physician to the 
Emperor Julian: "The divine word," says he, "being among us, and living with 

.u- -aid to hi- apostles, when dividing the bread amongst them : Take and 

eat ye all of this, It is my body : although he had not as yet been sacrificed in his 
own flesh. And in like manner he said : Take and drink, This is my blood; al- 
though his Bide had not as yet been pierced with a lance on the cross. And we 
i y da\ this sacred bread, al the time of the divine and mystical liturgy, 
on the unbloody altar, and laid out npon the immaculate table. It in no respect 
' - the image of the bodj of the Word-God, who is the cause of our sal- 
vation: and the chalice of the wine which is offered with the bread has no re- 

Bemblance to the blood that i- in his body. All this derives nothing, either from 

tin.' distinction of the members of this body, or from the quality of a flesh formed 

with blood, or from the invisible divinity without shape or Ion ii, which is invis- 
ibly joined to it. for- the bodj of .1, „. Christ is fiHed with blood, composed of 
It is erect, vai iout members of the hu- 

» Born in 310, died in 409. t Anchorate, No. 37. $He expresses himself in this 
manner on account of the uninitiated. The succeeding author was not under the 
■nine apprehen I in 368, Dial. ill. 



302 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

man body : it fa able to walk and to act: but this other tinner is round without 
distinction of members, inanimate without motion or Mood: bearing go resem- 
blance to that which is visible; in Jesus Christ, or to his unseen divinity. We 
-. npon the authority of the word of God, that, although it posseB- 
ses neither resemblance nor equality, it it properly and precisely the divine body 
itself, that is sacrificed on the divine table, that is divided without division among 
all the flock, and of which we are incessantly participating." 

St. Epiphanins* tells us: "The Church is the tranquil port of peace. We 
experience iu her bosom a sweetness which reminds us of the perfumes of the 
Cyprian \ ine : there we gather fruits tilled with benediction : she still every day 
presents us this draught so efficacious in dissipating our afflictions — the pure and 
true blood of Jesus Christ." 

St. Paulinus.f who wrote the life of St. Ambrose, relates the manner in which 
that saint received communion when at the point of death. This passage is cu- 
rious, inasmuch as it shews the ancient practice of the Church of giving to the 
dying communion under one kind alone. "Honoratus, bishop of Yercili (who 
attended him at his death) having retired to the top of the house for a little sleep 
and repose, heard a voicewhich for a third time said to him: Aiise, make hast •, 
for he will soon give up the ghost. Then, coming down, he presented to the 
saint the body of our Lord. He received it, and no sooner had he sw allowed it 
(quo acceptOj ubi fjlntirir). than he gave up the ghost, taking with him a good 
viaticum, that his soul being fortified with this food, might go to enjoy the com- 
pany of the angels.":}: 

St. Gaudentius, || illustrious for sanctity and learning, was travelling in the 
East, when he was chosen bishop of Brescia, in Italy. He composed a catechet- 
ical work § on the Eucharist, which is not less expressed nor less excellent than 
that of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and of which I will here produce a few specimens. 
"Hew ! ho is the Creator and Lord of all nations, who produces bread from the 
earth; of the bread makes his own proper body, (for he is able and he promised to 
do it : ) and who of water made wine, and of nine, his blood. the depth of the 
riches, of the knowledge and wisdom of God! (Rom. xi. 33.) It is the pasch, 
he says, that is, the passover of the Lord. Think not that earthly, which is 

made heavenly by him, who passes into it, and has made it his body and blood 

You will consume by your faith, whatever may remain of the Lamb; i. e. what- 
ever in these mysteries at present surpasses our comprehension, but which at the 
day of resurrection shall be made manifest : For, now. says the apostle, / know 
in part, but then I shall know even as I an known. All this must be consumed by 
fire, i. e. abandoned to the divine Spirit, that whatever we cannot at present ac- 
count for, may be consumed by the spirit of an ardent faith Believe then 

what is announced to thee; because what thou receivest, is the body of that ce- 
lestial bread, and the blood of that sacred vine: for when he delivered consecia- 
ted bread and wine to his disciples, he said : Thin is my body; this i* my blood. 
Let us believe him whose faith we profess, for truth cannot lie. Let us not break 
these solid and firm bones : This is my body; this is my blood. And what remains 

* Exposition of the faith, t About 402. %Life of St. Ambrose, dedicated to St. 
Augustine, by Paulinus, the deacon. || Elected bishop in 30d. § Tract. II. in exod. 
ilibl. P. P. T. V. p. 94G, 947. Edit. Lugduni, lii77. 



AXD THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 363 

in the mind of any one, which he does not conceive by this exposition, let it be 
consumed by the ardor of his faith." 

St. Chrysostom,* who may with good reason be considered as specially raised 
up by God to establish the truth and display the sanctity of the Eucharist, fur- 
nishea us with many more passages than our limits will allow of: a few will serve 
our purpose here. "In what sense does Jesus Christ say: The flesh prqfiteth 
nothing? He says it not of his flesh: God forbid: but of those who understand 
his word carnally. Now, what is it to understand his word carnally. It is to 
c mline our view merely to the things proposed, and to look no farther : for that 
is understanding them carnally. Now, we must not judge of mysteries by what 
we see of them : but we must consider them all with the eyes of the mind." f 

"It is necessary,! my dear brothers, to learn what is the miracle wrought in 
our mysteries, why it has been given to us, and what profit we ought to derive 
from it. "SVe are all but one body, the members of his flesh and bones. Let us 
xrho are initiated follow what I am about to say. In order then that we may be 
mixed up with the flesh of Jesus Christ, not only by love, but really and truly, he 
has fiiven the food that effects this prodigy, being desirous thus to manifest the 
love he bears us. For this purpose he has mixed and incorporated himself in us, 
iu older that we might form but one with him, in the same manner as the mem- 
bers form but one body, being all united to the same head. In fact those who 
love tenderly, always wish to be but one with the object of their love Where- 
fore, like lions which inhale and breathe forth flames, let us leave this table, hav- 
ing ourselves become formidable to the devil, reflecting on our head, and the love 
be has so wonderfully, and manifestly shewn us. Mothers not unfrequently put 
out their children to be nursed by strangers, but I, says he, feed my children with 
my own flesh : I myself am their food: for it is my desire to ennoble you all, and 
give you an earnest of future blessings. Giving myself to you, as I do, in this 
world, I .-hall be able, with much more reason, to treat you still better in the 
other. I wish to become your brother; for you I have taken flesh and blood; 
and note mart ■■>■■ ,■ 1 give yon this flesh and blood, by which I am become of the 
same nature with yourselves. This blood produces in us a brilliant and royal 
: it prevents the nobleness of the soul from suffering injury, when it fre- 
quently Bprinkles ami nourishes it This blood is spread through the soul, as 

soon as drank; it waters and fortifies it. This blood, when worthily received, 
put. the >1 \ lis to flight: it invites and introduces to us the angels and the Lord 

of the ang 1- '1 bis blood, being shed, washed and purified the world And 

if. in the capital of Egypt, the symbol of this blood, being merely sprinkled upon 
possessed such \ irtue and efficacy, the truth and reality is infinite- 
ly more powerful ami efficacious If death so much feared the figure and the 

shadow, how much, I t me ask you, will it not fear the reality? Thus every 

tin.- we partake of thit body ami taste this blood, let us think that he who sit- 
tetfe in beaven, and whom the angels adore, is the self-same whom we taste and 
receive here below." 

" liut what! Do you not see these vessels, upon the altar, of dazzling bright- 

i tit Aiitioch in 386, patriarch of Constantinople in :'•'.>-', banished into 
A 'in -n-.i. Nov. 14th, 407.— t Horn. KLVll. on 8t. John.— t Horn. LXl. to thi pcoylcqf 
Anihnii. ii .in. \LV. on St. John, very nearly tin ame. 



364 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Bess and purity? Our souls ought to be still more resplendent with purity and 
sanctitv. And why so? Because if these vessels are so well pnlished.it is on 
our account: they can neither taste nor feel him whom they contain, but we most 
certainly " 

"Consider, man! the royal table is laid out, the angela attend: the King 
himself is present ; and thou remainest in a stupid indifference I Thy garments 
are soiled, and thou carest not ? But they are clean, thou wilt say to me. Weft, 
then, adore and communicate." How says your Church of England! Commu- 
nicate, but take care that you adore not. 

"Joseph said of old to Pharoah's cup-bearer : The king shall permit thee again 
to present him the cup. But 1 do not say, that you will present the cup to the 
King of heaven: 1 tell you that the King of hen ten himself will give you a drink, 
which has a wonderful virtue, and surpasses by its excellence all corporeal and 
spiritual creatures. They who are initiated in the divine mysteries, know what 
is the virtue of the sacred chalice; and you also may know it in a little time."* 
And why not immediately? If this drink, possessing so wonderful a power, is 
nothing but a sign and a figure, why do you not announce it immediately, 
O Chrysostom ? Why do you fear the uninitiated, and wherefore this conceal- 
ment?" 

" If there is no one who would receive the king without paying him due re- 
spect ; nay, if there is no one who would not hesitate to touch even his garments, 
with dirty hands, although alone and unobserved, and though the robes are but 

the work of worms how shall we dare to receive with so much irreverence 

the body of God, who is abore all things ; that pure and spotless body, that 
body united to the divine nature, that body by which we are and live, that body 
which has broken the gates of death, and opened the vaults of heaven." f 

On those words of the apostle : Let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of 
this bread, he says::}: "The initiated know to what this refers, they understand 
what is this bread and what this chalice. He that eateth and diinketh of them 
unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. We have already dis- 
cussed this precept and explained the sense of the words." 

On the words of St. John: And there came forth blood and icater : "It is not 
without a reason or from chance that these two streams flowed from the side of 
our Saviour, for from them the Church was formed. The initiated, who have 
been regenerated bv water and are nourished by this flesh and blood, understand 
well my meaning. From this happy and fruitful source are derived our mysteries 
and our sacraments, in order that, when you shall approach to our awful cup, 
you may so come as if you were going to drink from this sacred side." || 

" wonderful goodness of our God ! He, who is seated at the right hand of 
his Father, permits himself to be touched by our hands, and gives himself to those 
who wish to receive and embrace him ?" § 

"Elias left behind him his mantle to his disciple, but in so doing he deprived 
himself of it. The Son of God has left us his flesh, but in leaving it to us, he is 
not deprived of it, but together with it raises himself up to heaven."1T 

* Discourse to the postulants for baptism, t Horn. XXIV. on the 1st- Ep. to the Cor. 
J Horn, that applause is not to be sought for in preaching. || Mom. I. XXXV. on St. 
John. §InB. 111. on the Priesthood II Horn. II. to the people oj Antiock, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 365 

"This sacred table represents the crib : for here also the body of the Lord is 
laid, not, as then, wrapped up in swaddling clothes, but surrounded on all sides 
with the Holy Spirit. The Magi only adored him : but you, if you approach 
with a pure conscience, are permitted to receive and take him away with you." * 

"Jesus Christ lias given us his body to take and eat, and this is the last proof 

of nis love Let us approach to him therefore, with fervor and an ardent 

charity This body, lying in a stable, was adored by the wise-men They 

came from a far country, and adored him with great fear and trembling It is 

not now in the stable, but on the altar, that we see him. Let us then shew him 
u n if ration murk above that of these Gentiles, -j- 

"Go then to Bethlehem, to the house of spiritual bread yet so, however, 

that you approach to adore and not to trample under foot the Son of God 

Beware how you imitate Herod and say with him ; that I also may adore him ; 
and thus approach only to put him to death. They resemble Herod, who un- 
worthily partake of the mysteries. For the unworthy receiver will be guilty of 

the body and blood of the Lord For this reason it is that we tremble, lest 

whil.-t we appear as supplicants and adorers, we should be quite the opposite in 
our conduct." $ 

John, ]| bishop and successor of St. Cyril in the see of Jerusalem, expresses 
Himself time in his sermon on the Eucharist: "0 man! what are you doing? 
When the priest said : Raise up your hearts on high, did you not promise to do 
so by replying : We have them raised up to the Lord ? And yet you are not 

ashamed to break your word This table is spread with mysteries: on it the 

Lamb of God is immolated in your behalf. The priest officiates with an ardent 

zeal for your salvation Behold the spiritual fire descending from heaven. 

B I in ih' chalice the same blood which torn drawn from the pure and divine side 

of Jems ChrUt, in order to purify you Do you think that you still see bread? 

and that you still see wine? God forbid you should think any such thing? 

When you approach to communicate, think not that you receive this divine body 
from the hand of man, but consider it as the divine flame, which was seen by 

lii-. which you receive from the seraphim themselves Represent to your- 

.- Ivee this salutary blood as flowing still from the pure and divine side of Jesus 
Christ; and approaching with this idea, receive it with a pure mouth.... Remain 
with trembling and reverence, your eyes cast down, your soul elevated " Sen- 
timents and attitude of adoration. 

St. Maruthas, metropolitan of Tagrit, § in Mesopotamia, the contemporary and 
friend of St. Chrysostom, who had composed a commentary on the Gospel, of 
which Ehere remains an extract in a Byriac copy written in the year 851, and 
which M. Assemani lias given us in Latin, IT attaches this sense to the words; Do 
thU in remembrance of me. ••This command was necessary and very proper : for, 
if the perpetual participation of the sacraments had not been ordained, whence 
could we have learned salvation through Christ; or by whose persuasion have 
been led to the knowledge of so great a mystery? To the bulk of mankind it 
would have been most difficult to be believed; and thus they would have been 

•Discourse on St. PhRosjonius. fHom. \\!V. on I. Cor. | Mom. VII. on St. 

Mini || i ho-. ,i Bishop in 386. Died iu 416. !jAbout>412. H Uib. Qnuurta T. I. 

p. 170, Horns, l".:il. 
31* 



366 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

d iprived of the communion of the body and blood of Christ. But now, as often 
as we approach, and receive ou our hands the body and blond, we believe, tliat 
we embrace his body, and become, as it is written, flesh of his flesh, and bone of 
his bones. For Christ did not call it thefiyure or species of his body, b it he said : 

TlIlS TRULY, IS MT liULlV; AND THIS IS Mi' BLOOD." 

St. Jerome,* in his commentary on St. Matthew, says: "After the typical 
passover was accomplished, and Christ had eaten the lamb with his apostles, be 

takes the bread, which comforts the heart of man, and passes to the true sacra- 
ment of the passover : that as Melchisedech, priest of the high God, in prefiguring 
him, had done, offering bread and wine, Christ also should make present the 
truth of his body and blood." And in another part of his works : t ' - There is as 
much difference between the loaves offered to God in the old law, and the body 
of Jesus Christ, as betwixt the shadow and the body, betwixt the image and the 
truth, and betwixt the types and the things they represent," 

"But, as for us, let us acknowledge, that the bread which our Saviour broke, 
and gave to his disciples, is the body of our Lord, he saying to them : Take and 
eat , this is my body, and of the cup: Brink ye all of this: this is my blood of the 
New Testament, which shall be shed for many : — If then the bread that came down 
from heaven is the Lord's body, and if the wine which he gave to his disciples, is 
his blood, which was shed for many for the remission of sins, let us reject these 
Jewish tables — and receive at his hand the cup of the new covenant. Moses gave 
us not the true bread, but our Lord Jesus did. lie invites us to the feast, and is 
himself our meat: he eats with us, and we eat him. AVe drink his blood, and 
without him we cannot drink." | 

"God forbid, that I should say anything amiss of these men (priests) who, 
succeeding the apostles in their ministry, make the body of Jesus Christ by their 
sacred mouth." || 

" And elsewhere he calls the priest a Mediator between God and man, who 
produces the body of Jesus Christ by his sacred mouth." 

St. Augustin, § bishop of Hippo in Africa, where religion being announced 
later had made less progress, and where even in his time a considerable propor- 
tion of the people where still involved in the darkness of paganism, frequently 
found himself obliged, in pursuance of the discipline of secrecy, to speak with 
caution and a studied obscurity on the dogmas of the Eucharist in the treatises 
and popular discourses, to which all sorts of persons were led from curiosity to 
hear him. You shall however be enabled to judge from the passages about to be 
adduced, that he did not express himself less clearly than the other Fathers, w h 'li 
he found himself emancipated from the fear of compromising the secrecy of the 
mysteries. IT 

* Born in 340, died in 420. Comment in Matth. C. 26. T. III. p. 716, PaiisiK 1009. 
t Comment in Ep. ad. Tit. C. I. T. 3. p. 1045. J Kp. CL. ad. Hedib. T. I. p. Ul'J. 
|| Ep. I. ad. Heliod. T. I. p. 5. § Born in 354, died in 430. 

It" The sacramentarians," wrote Luther a little before his death, "consider St. 
Augustin as their protector, because he frequently uses the words sacrament, mys- 
tery, invisible, sign. In my opinion, the Church has not had since the Apostle's 
time, a more excellent Doctor than St. Augustin: but this holy and ven Table Doc- 
tor is so shamefully distorted by the sacramentarians, that he is brought forward by 
them as the guarantee and patron of a heresy full of venom and blasphemies. For 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 367 

"We receive, with faithful heart and mouth, the Mediator of God and man, 
the Man Christ Jesus : who has given us his body to eat and his blood to drink : 
although it may appear more horrible to eat the flesh of a man than to destroy 
it. and to drink human blood than to spill it.* 

•• Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, said the psalmist to God. For the 
ancients, « hen as yet the true sacrifice was foretold in figures, celebrated the type 

of what was to come Those sacrifices, therefore, signifying promises, were 

annulled. And what was given to complete these promises? That body, which 
you know; which all do not know; and which, it were to be wished, some did 
not know to their condemnation. Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, 
said Jesus Christ. Are we, then, without a sacrifice? God forbid. But thou 
hast Jilted a Ij'xhj fm- me. Thou hast rejected these sacrifices, in order to form 
this body: and until it was formed, it was thy will that these should be offered. 
The accomplishment of what was promised did away with the promises. For if 
these promises were still subsisting, it would be a sign that they were not accom- 
plish -d. This body was promised by certain signs : but when the promised truth 
came, the signs were taken away. In this body we subsist : of this body we are 
made partakers."! 

"The blood of Jesus Christ being upon the earth, has a strong and powerful 
voice, when all nations, after having received, answer Amen, it is so. This is the 
loud voice of the blood, which the blood itself produces in the mouth of the 
faithful, who have been redeemed by it." And in the same book the Eucharist 
is called "the sacrament of hope, which unites the members of the Church, 
whilst they continue to drink what has flowed from the side of Jesus Christ. \ 

•• We must entertain no doubt, that by the prayers of the Church and the sal- 
utaiv sacrifice, the dead are su-ccored. It is what the universal Church ob- 
. according to the tradition she has received from the Father; she prays 
for those who died in the communion of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, ami makes a particular commemoration of them in the sacrifice, she even 
-. that it is oil' red for them. There is not a doubt that the deceased de- 
rive advantage from it, but those only who before death lived in such a manner 
able, after death, to derive advantage from it."|| 

my part, to the utmost of my power, and so long as God shall spare my life, I will 
it, and will protest that he sutfers from their misrepresentations." Indeed, 
e passages of his so express and irrefragable, that they have forced this ac- 
knowledgment from Zuinglius: "Though St. Augustin speaks in another manner 
on this subject, stdl however, in two places he seems clearly to express what he un- 

deratanda by the word body We are easily inclined to believe that St. Augustin, 

who was a man of talent and of quick penetration above others, dared not, in his 
time, explicitly declare the truth, which had for the most part outstepped its boun- 
dary. Being extremely pious, he perceived what this sacrament was, and for what 
en I it was instituted : hut the opinion of the corporal presence had already gained 
th" upperhand." Whence at least it follows, from the confession of Zuinglius, that 
what we believe respecting the Eucharist, was believed in the Church these four- 
teen centuries ago, that is, three centuries after the apostles, and in the golden age of 
Christianity. 

•Contra Ad vers. Legis, I.. II. i\. T. vi. p.\!". I. Parisiis, Hill, fin l'sal. p. 1 1_>, I 13. 

X Contra Faustum I.. \i. \. Senn. el. xxn. dc Verbis Dom. 



308 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

"It appears most dearly, that the disciples, the first time they received the body 
via/ blood of the Lord, did Dot receive them fasting. But must we on that ac- 
BOnnt Blander the Church, because we now receive them only when fasting? It 

das pleased the Boly Spirit, from respect to so great a sacrament, that the body 
of the Lord should enter into the mouth of the Christian before every other nour- 
ishment, and for this reason has the custom prevailed throughout the world-".* 

And on these words of the title of Psalm XXXIII, he was carried in hi* own 
hand*, the holy doctor delivers himself as follows :f "But how can this happen 
to a man ? and who could conceive it my brethren? For, what is man, that he 
should bear himself in his own hands? Any man may be borne in the hands of 
another: but no one in his own. We see not how this can be understood of 
David in the literal sense; but of Jesus Christ, without difficulty. For he was 
borne in his own hands, when presenting his own body, he said, This is my body; 
for then he bore his body in his hands." It is impossible for any man to do what 
Jesus Christ then did. Now, any man may bear himself in figure and represen- 
tation : therefore it was not in this manner that the learned bishop of Hippo un- 
derstood Jesus Christ to have borne himself. 

He again touches upon the same subject in another discourse on the same 
psalm :| "How was he borne in his hands? Because when he gave his qwh 
body and blood; he took into his hands what the faithful know; and he bore him- 
self in a certain manner, saying, This is my body." St. Augustin, here adds in 
a certain manner, to remove the idea of a body being borne in the ordinary man- 
ner, and to determine the vague sense of the word to bear to that particular man- 
mer which can be conceived only of the body of Jesus Christ, and of the incom- 
prehensible state in which he is in this sacrament: he adds it on account also of 
the uninitiated, in whose presence he avoided naming the bread. 

But here is a passage || which I entreat you to consider attentively. The illus- 
trious bishop, having to explain those words of David : adore his foot-stool; asks 
himself: But how can the earth be adored, when the scripture positively tells 
us : Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God alone ? And yet, behold, it tells us here : 
Adore his foot-stool ? But God, informing me what is his foot-stool, says : The 
earth is my foot-stool. (Isaias c. LXVI. v. 1.) I am in hesitation and uncer- 
tainty: I am afraid of adoring the earth, and of finding nnself condemned by 
him who created heaven and earth. On the other hand, I am afraid, if I do not 
adore the foot-stool of my God, because the prophet tells me: Adore his foot- 
stool. In this perplexing uncertainty I turn towards Christ, because it is he 
whom 1 am here in quest of, and I discover in what way the earth is adored with- 
out impiety, and how his foot-stool is adored without impiety. For Jesus Christ 
has taken earth from the earth, for flesh comes from the earth, and he has taken 
his flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because he lived in the world with this 
flesh, and has r/iven us this same flesh to eat for our salvation, no one eatinf/ thin 
flesh without first having adored it, we find by this how the foot-stool of the Lord 
comes to be adored, and that we not only are free from sin in adoring it, but that 
we should sin if we adored it not. But is it the flesh that giveth life '! The Lord 
himself, in exalting this our earth, tells us it is the spirit that giveth life, and 

* B. II. vi. <)(i Januarius's Quest ions, t Sermon I. on Ps. XXXIII. } Sermon 11. 
on Ps. XXXIII. || On Ps. XCV1II. 



AND THE REFORMATION IM GENERAL. 369 

that the flesh profitetb nothing. Wherefore, whatever earth you bow or pros- 
trate before (he means, whatever part yon receive of this sacred body) regard it 
not as the earth : but understand the Holy one, whose ibot-stool the earth is, 
which you adore. For it is on his account that you adore it." This test alone 
brings us completely acquainted with the doctrine of St. Augustin, teaching us 
to ad .re Jesus Christ in the Eucharist: it also gives us to see the doctrine of the 
universal Church, by bearing testimony to the practice generally observed, "no 
one eating this flesh, without having first adored it." Now adoration supposes 
tli ■ real presence. 

St. Isidore of Pclusium,* one of the most illustrious disciples of St. John 
©hrrsostom, and who. flourishing at the epoch of the general council of Ephe- 
sus, corresponded with St. Cyril of Alexandria, writing against Macedonius, ex- 
- himself as followsjf "Since in the invocation of the sacred baptism, 
together with the Father and the Son. the Holy Ghost is invoked as delivering 
from sins: since on the mysterious table, it is he who from common bread produces 

i body of Jesus Christ incarnate: whence comes it, foolish man, 

that thou teachest that the Holy Spirit was made or created, and that he is not 
of an independent nature, operating by himself and consubstanUal with the kingly 
and divine ess -nee of the Father and the Son V- 

St. Cyril % patriarch of Alexandria, has, of all the Fathers, explained most at 
large the words of Jesus Christ in the sixth chapter of St. John, and has most 
frequently established the belief of the Church on the dogmas of the Eucharist, 
in simple didactic discourses, in plain argumentation, in a clear style, without 
impetuosity or the sallies of eloquence, and more as an interpreter than as an 
orator. Now, not only did he establish the real presence when explaining the 
Gospel; he confirmed it still more when combating the heresy of Nestorius, 
who, attacking the mystery of the incarnation, fell foul of course upon that of 
the Eucharist. " For if the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, as Nesto- 
rius would have it, are not personally united together, the body and blood which 
are present to us in the sacrifice of the Church are but the body and blood of an 
ordinary man, and consequently we receive nothing more than the simple and 
naked humanity, and not the divinity of Jesus Christ. For the divinity being 
and distinct, can by neither taken nor eaten, unless it be by adjunction, 
and in as much as it is personally united with a perceptible object, which serves 
it ;i- a rehide: and the humanity, being also separate and distinct, cannot vivify 
(he body and soul unless by adjunction, and in as much as it is united with the 

divinity of Cliri-t Whence it follows that Nestorius, by separating the two 

natures of Christ, deprived the Eucharist of the power of vivifying."|| 
St. Cyril commenced by assembling a Synod, in which Nestorius was con- 
L he afterwards presided, as Legate of pop'' Celestine, over the third 
general council of Epheens, which ado). ted the letter h" had written to tfestorius. 
We will cite the two councils Bret, that we may learn the generally received doc- 
trine of tli" Church. 
The Synod held at Alexandria decided that "we do not believe that the body 

and blood, which are offered lo us, are the body and blood of a mere man like 

• Pic. I iii 440. t Bp. <l\. againtt Macedonius. J Elected in 412, died in 444. 
„ TreatiM on the Eucharist. 



370 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

ourselves; but we receive them as having been made the body and blood of the 
Word, which vivifies all things. Fora mere common flesh is incapable of giving 

life, according to what our Saviour himself says: The fl-jsh profiteth nothing, it 
is the spirit that giveth life."* 

The general council of Ephesus approved and adopted the letter written by St. 
Cyril to Xestorius in which are found these words: "So likewise do we ap- 
proach the mysterious and blessed things, and are sanctified, becoming participa- 
tors in the sacred body and precious blood of Christ, the Redeemer of us all ; not 
by receiving common flesh, which God forbid, nor even the flesh of a sanctified 

man but a flesh become properly the fle*h of the Word himself." Xestorius 

allowed with the Catholics, that in the Eucharist, the flesh of Jesus Christ was 
really eaten with the mouth, that is according to Xestorius, the flesh of a sanc- 
tified man. and according to the council and St. Cyril, the flesh become the body 
of the Word himself, or of the Man-God. 

"If Jesus Christ," says St. Cyril t " is but a mere man, how can he be said to 
give eternal life to those who approach this table? and how shall he be divided 

both here and in all places without diminution? Let us take the body of life, 

itself, which for our sakes has already inhabited our body; let us drink the sanc- 
tifying blood of life, believing with firm faith that Christ is at once the priest 
and the victim, he who offers and who is offered, he who receives and who is 
given." 

" In order that we may be brought into unity both with God and with one 
another, although separated in soul and body by the distinction which exist be- 
tween us, the only Son of God has discovered a means, which is an invention and 
an expedient of his Father's. For uniting in the mysterious communion all the 
faithful by one body, whir-h is his own, he makes it one and the same body with 
theirs. Indeed, who would be able to divide and separate from the natural union 
existing among them, those who are connected in unity with Jesus Christ by this 
one body ? If then we all participate in one and the same bread, we all form 
but one body, because Jesus Christ cannot be divided. For this reason the Church 
is called the body of Jesus Christ, and we its members, according to St. Paul, 
for we are all united to Jesus Christ by his sacred body, receiving into our own 
bodies this one and indivisible body; by which it happens that our members be- 
long to him more than to ourselves." :{: 

And in the twelfth book, explaining that part of the Gospel where it is said, 
that the soldiers divided the garments of Jesus Christ into four parts, but that 
his tunic they did not divide, he says "that the four parts of the world have ob- 
tained by lot, and that they possess, without division, the sacred robe of the Word, 
that is, his body: because the only Son, although divided in each individual 
Christian, and sanctifying the soul and body of each by his own flesh, is neverthe- 
less entire and undivided in all, being one every where, because, as St. Paul says, 
he cannot be divided." 

"The Jews strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us hi 
ftesh to eat? This how is quite a Jewish difficulty, and will be the cause of th. 
severest punishment : for they will justly be reputed guilty of grievous crime* 

* Nestorius admitted the presence of Jesus Christ as man, but not as God. t Dis- 
burse on the mysterious supper. I Commentary on St. John. 



AXD THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 371 

who dare to attack by their incredulity the excellent and supreme Creator of 
all tiling?, and who have the audacity to put the question how, respecting what 

he chooses to operate The rude and indocile mind rejects as an extravagance 

whatever surpasses its comprehension, because it does surpass it; its ignorant 
temerity leads it to the extremity of pride. We shail sec that the Jews fell into 
this excess, if we consider the nature of the case. They ought without hesitation 
to have received the words of our Saviour, whose divine virtue and invincible 
power over nature, which he had on many occasions displayed before their eyes, 

they had so often admired And yet, behold, they put the mad interrogation, 

h<nr, to God, as if ignorant that the word contained a blasphemy, since in God 

resides the power to do all things without difficulty But if thou persistest, O 

Jew, in patting this how, I in my turn will ask of thee, how the rod of Moses 

was 'hanged into a serpent? flow the waters were changed into blood? It 

would be more becoming, therefore, to believe in Christ and to give credence to 
his words : much more becoming to procure and pay eulogies to him, than rashly 

and inconsiderately to exclaim, How can this man give us his flesh to eat For 

our parts, in receiving the divine mysteries, let us have a faith free from all cu- 
riosity : this is our duty, and we should never again put the question how to the 
words that are said."* 1 cannot sufficiently exhort the children of the reforma- 
tion, of whatever communion, to reflect upon this passage, and to examine tho- 
roughly into the doctrine it so clearly teaches. 

St. Proclus, disciple of St. John Chrysostom, and one of his successors in the 
Bee of Constantinople,! had the glory of converting the illustrious Roman 
Volusianus, who had opposed St. Augustin himself, and who declared ever after 
his baptism, that, if Rome had possessed three such men as Proclus, the very 
name of paganism would have been extinguished. He had moreover the honor 1 , 
after the magnificent panegyric he had pronounced on St. Chrysostom, of obtain- 
ing from tie' emperor Theodosius the younger, at his and the people's united re- 
. that tin- venerable body of this illustrious archbishop should be translated 
tantinople, where it was received with extraordinary pomp, thirty-live 
\, a - after his death in Armenia. Of. the books that Proclus composed, there re- 
mains but one short piece on the Tradition of the Divine Liturgy, in which are 
found these word- : •• By th se prayers (of the Liturgy) the descent of the Holy 
S.urit was expected, that, by his sacred presence, he would make the bread, that is 
.,■/, the body of Christ, and the wine, lhingled with water, 
hi bloo I " In Bibl. P. P. .Max. T. VI. p. G18. 

St. Pel t, arphbishop of Ravenna,:]: Burnamed Chrysologns for hie golden elo- 
quence, follows:|| "Let the Christians, who touch every 

d.iv th ■ very body of Jeans Christ, Irani by this example (of the women labor- 
er a flux of blood) what remedy is th ire to be found for their maladies, 
■ii was perfectly cored by merely teaching the hem of his garment. 
lint it is ind ied deplorabl ■ that, whereas she found in this lean the cure of her 
find, on the contrary, fresh disorders in the remedy itself. Of this 
the apostles warns those who touch the body of the Lord unworthily, telling 
than, that they receive their own damnation." Tin- example has been brought 

•I!. IV .on St. iiV.vi. f Elected in 434, died in 446, t Elected in 433, died in 
VM. || Discourse XXXtV. 



sTa on the church of England 

forward in the same manner by otlier more ancient Father?, and amongst others 
by St. Dionysius, patriarch of Alexandria, and St. John Chrysostewu 

"We read in the Gospel, that a pharisee invited the Lord to eat with him. 
But wherefore, pharisee, do you wish to eat with Jesus Christ? Believe in 
him, be a Christian, and you shall eat him himself. I am, said the Saviour, the 
bread that is come down from heaven. God always gives more than we ask of 
him : for he gives himself to be eaten by him who wished only for the honor of 
eating with hiin : and yet, in granting him this more extraordinary favor, which 
he did not expect, he did not deny him a less, which he did petition for. Did he 
not also of his own accord make the same promise to his disciples, when he said: 
You who have always remained with me till now, shall eat and drink at my table 
in my kingdom? Christian, consider now, whether he who has given himself to 
be eaten by you during this life, will, in the other, be able to refuse you any of 
the good things he possesses." * 

St. Leo, -f so deservedly surnamed the Great, for the splendor with which he has 
illustrated the Church by the talents and vigor which he displayed against the 
heresy of Eutyches, condemned at Chalcedon, expresses himself thus upon the 
Eucharist, of which he was speaking indirectly in one of his sermons: -'The 
Lord having said : Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his 
blood, you shall not have life in you : communicate therefore at the sacred 
table, in such a manner that you entertain no doubt whatever as to the truth of 
the body and blood of Jesus Christ : for we there receive by the mouth what is 
believed by faith : and vainly do we reply, Amen (it is true) if any doubt is 
entertained as to what is received.":): 

Theodoret, || disciple of St. Chrysostom, and who, from the confession of the 
centuriators of Magdeburg, seems to have established transubstantiation, has 
often, as he himself declares in his Dialogues, studiously selected obscure expres- 
sions, in order that the truth might remain veiled in his writings, which might 
fall into the hands of unbelievers. And yet, in apassage which from its obscurity 
appears favorable to the sacramentarian^ he fails not to insert a decisive word 
which of itself expresses the whole Catholic doctrine to the satisfaction of every 
sincere seeker of truth. For, speaking of the mysterious symbol*, or signs, which 
after consecration are still visible and palpable, he adds : § " Nevertheless they 
are, from that time, conceived to be what they have been made; they are be- 
lieved as such, and are adored as being the things that they are believed to be." 

Theodoret was not always restrained by the same apprehension, as you may 
judge from the follow Lng passages : •• The apostle reminds the Corinthians of that 
sacred night when the Lord, closing the typical pasch, displayed the true original 
of this figure, opened the portals of the salutary sacrament, and gave his pre- 
cious body and blood not only to the eleven apostles, but to Judas himself." And 
again on these words : He thai shall eat this bread, or drink this chalice nnirorthily, 
shall be guilty of the body andblood of Jesus Christ: "Here the apostle strikes 
at the ambitious : he strikes also at us, who. with a bad conscience, dare receive 
the divine sacraments. This sentence, shall, be guilty of the body and blood, signi- 
fies, that as Judas betrayed and the Jews insulted him, so do they treat him with 

* Sermon XCV. t Chosen pope in 410, die.! in 451. } Discourse VI. on the fast of 
the seventh month. II Bishop in 131, died very old 470. § Dial. II. 



AXD THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 3T3 

ignominy who receive into impure hands bis most holy body, and introduce it 
into an unclean mouth." * 

Judge again of his doctrine from the following fact, recorded by him : f "The 
Emperor Theodosina being arrived at Milan, after the slaughter committed by his 
Older at Thessalbnica, and w ishing to enter the Church as he had been accustomed, 
St. Ambrose went out to prevent him; and meeting him at the outside of the 
great porch, he forbade him to enter, using nearly the following words : With 
what eyes, Emperor, can you behold the temple of Him, who is our common 
: ? With what feet will you dare tread upon the ground so holy ? How will 
yon presume to Btretch forth your hands towards God, while they are yet reeking 
with blood unjustly shed? How will you dare touch the most holy bodg of the 
S:i ( i ■ mi of the world with those same hands, that have been stained with the carnage 
at Thesaalonica? And how will you dare receive that precious blood into your 
mouth, after it has, in the fury of your passion, pronounced the unjust and cruel 
words, which have caused the blood of so many innocent persons to be spilt? 
Retire then, and beware how you attempt to add crime to crime! Permit your- 
self rather to be bound in the manner that is ordained in heaven by that God, 
who is the master of kings and people; and respect that sacred bond which is 

able to heal your soul of this mortal wound, and restore it to health. The 

Emperor, moved by these words, returned to the imperial palace, weeping and 
groaning ; and a long time afterwards, that is, at the end of eight months, the 
divine Ambrose absolved him from his sin." 

chilis, J on the authority of Theophanes in his Chronological History was 
celebrated for his learning, in the time of St. Cyril of Alexandria. He was priest 
;it Jerusalem. Inhia Commentary on Leviticus, we read:|| "God ordained in 
the old law, that what remained of the flesh and the bread of the sacrifices, should 
b ■ burnt This we Bee with our own eyes now accomplished in the Church, where 
what remains after tin- celebration of the mysteries of the communion of the 
faithful, is burn) in the fire. Thus this sensible action represents something 
spiritual and intelligible to those who arc careful to remark it : viz: that when 
we find ourselves incapable of eating the sacrifice entirely, our mind becoming 
weak and faint, and doubting whether what is seen should be believed to be the 
body of the Lord, which the angels themselves, cannot behold, then we must 
not remain in this doubt but burn it in the fire of the spirit, that it may eat and 
consume •■.hat our weakness is not able to eat and consume. And how shall the 
lire of the spirit consume it within us, unless by our considering that the things 
which in us appear imposribh . are yet w ry possible by virtue of the Holy Spirit*" 

"The mysteries of .1 ire properly the Holy of Holie*,§ because it 

i .-• tli body of him, concerning whom the angel Gabriel said to the virgin : The 
Holy dm- that shall in- borne of you shall be called the Son of Ood. And that man 
knows not what he receives, who knows not its power and dignity, and that it is 

truly this iiiuii body "u'l blood The Spirit of (rod within as, and Hi 'word that 

he has left as, regulate the use of our senses, and pren qI d »1 onlj our taste, but 
also our hearing, our sight, our touch, and our smell from taking more upon 
them than is becoming in this inystery : so that they lead us not to torn) any vul- 

* On 1 Cor. xi. t Keel's. If ir-t. J$. V. xvii. } I To nourished at Jerusalem from 440 
to 470. II B. It. viii. 5 Hesychlua, book VI. ch. xii. 

32 



374 OX THE CTIUUCH OF ENGLAND 

gar notion or feeble reasoning unworthy of things so elevated and sublime 

For the sanctification of the mystic sacrifice and the change and transformation 
of the Bensible into spiritual things, must be attributed to him who is the true 
priest, Jesus Christ; that is, we must consider him as the sole author of this 
miracle because his power and the word pronounced by him sanctify the visible 
things to such a degree, that they art' raised Car above the reach of our senses." 

Salvias,* bishop of Marseilles, of whom Gennadius has said that he might 
without jealousy be called the master of bishops, expresses himself as follows in 
his book to the Catholic Church: "If anyone asks why God requires more from 
Christians by the Gospel than he did of old from the Jews by the old law, the 
reason is easily given. For if we now pay more homage and service to God, it 
is because we are more indebted to him. The Jews had but the shadow : we en- 
joy the reality. They were slaves : we are adopted children. They were cov- 
ered with malediction : we are loaded with graces. They received the letter 
which gave death : we have received the Spirit which giveth life. To them was 
sent a servant for a master : and to instruct us, the Son of God himself has been 
sent. They passed through the Red Sea, to enter into a desert: and we have 
only to pass through the water of baptism to enter a kingdom. They ate man- 
na; and we eat Jesus Christ. They were fed with the flesh of birds; and we are 
fed with the body of a God. They received the dew of heaven; and we receive 
the God of hcaren." 

St. C;esarius, bishop of Aries, f bears testimony to the conformity of the doc- 
trine of the Gallican Church with that of the Universal Church: ''Because 
there was nothing in us, which could make us live, and nothing in God, which 
could make him die, he took his body from our mortal nature, in order that 
joining it to his immortal nature, life might die to make the dead live again. 
And as he was to deprive us of the sight of this body, which he had assumed, by 
raising it into heaven, it became necessary that he should consecrate on this day 
the sacrament of his body and blood, to the end that this same body, which he 
had once offered as the price of our salvation, should receive from us continual 
worship in this nrystery ; that the effects of our redemption operating unceas- 
ingly for the salvation of men, in the series of ages the ■sacrifice of the same re- 
demption should also be unceasingly offered in this holy Church, and that thus 
this victim of salvation, which ought to live eternally in our memory, should be 
continually present to us by the operation of his grace, in such manner that there 
shall remain but one perfect host, of which we are to judge by faith and not by 
the senses, and which cannot be seen by corporeal and exterior eyes, but only by 
those which are interior and spiritual. Now, it is of it that our Saviour speaks, 
when he says with divine authority, that his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood 
is drink indeed. For this reason there should no longer remain in us the leait 
doubt of incredulity; because the author of this heavenly gift himself bears tes- 
timony to the truth and reality of the gift. For it is this invisible priest, who by 
the secret virtue of his divine word changes visible creatures into the substance of 
his body and blood, saying: Take and eat, this is my body: and then, repeating 
the same sanctifying word : Take and drink, this is my blood. As then by a sim- 

* He flourished from about 490 to 500. t Chosen in 001, died in 542, Horn. VII. on 
the Pascli. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 375 

pie word, God, in an instant formed from nothing the height of heaven, the 
depth of the seas, and the extent of the earth, in like manner, in the spiritual 
sacraments, by a power nothing inferior, the virtue of his word is immediately 
followed by the effect. 

" You see how estimable and salutary are the blessing which the power of the 
benediction produces on this occasion : but in order that this change of the ter- 
restrial and perishable substances of bread and urine into tike very substance of Jesus 
Christ, may not appear to you something new and impossible, you who have al- 
ready found a second birth in Jesus Christ, interrogate yourselves Xo one 

ought to doubt that, by the sovereign order of God, and the presence of his Ma- 
jesty, the bread and urine can be changed into the nature of the body of the Lord, 
because we see that, by a wonderful contrivance of heavenly mercy, n an bin-self 
becomes the body of Jesus Christ. Now, as they who come to the faith are still, 
before baptism, in the bonds of their ancient servitude, but, as soon as the words 
of this sacrament are pronounced over them, are cleansed from all the impurity 
of their sins ; in like manner, when the bread and wine, which are to be blessed 
with the heavenly words, are placed upon the holy altars, there is no doubt, that 
before they are consecrated by the invocation of the name of God, the substance 
of the bread and wine is still there : but after the words of Jesus Christ are pro- 
nounced, it is the bodij and blood of Jesus Christ. And is there any reason to be 
astonished, that he should be able to change by his word what he has been able 
to create by the same word ? It even seems to be a less miracle to change into 
something better what already existed, than to form out of nothing what before 
had no existence." 

" We will terminate the sixth age by St. Eutyches, Patriarch of Constantino- 
ple.* Of all the writings composed by him, there remains but one famous pas- 
bicb has been preserved by Nicetas Choniates, a Greek historian of the 
twelfth century ;f the passage is this: "He who receives but one part of the 
consecrated species, still receives whale and enttrethe most hah) body and adorable 
/. ood of the Lord. For, although the body and the blood are divided and dis- 
tributed among all, because it is mixed in each of them, it ceases not to remain 
always indivisible in itself; in the same manner as one only seal being stamped 
apon many different pieces of wax, imparts to each in particular all its figure 
and form, and C sases not to remain ever one and the same in itself, without per- 
mitting the multiplicity of the subjects that receive the impression of its image, 
to divide or change its unity: and as the voice that proceeds from one man, and 
to which the air responds, is whole and entire in his mouth, and penetrates whole 
and entire into the ears of them who hear it, so that one receives neither more 
DOr I than another, because, although the voice is a body, being nothing else 
but agitated air, it is in such a manner one and indivisible as that all equally 
hear it, although there should !»• an audience often thousand persons : so, no 

hi t; doubt, that after the myBterioUS consecration and the holy fi action, 

the incorruptible, holy, immortal, and lite-giving blood of the Lord being-formed 
by virtue of the sacrifice in Che consecrated species, Impresses all its virtue ii\ 

each of those Who receive it. and It found whole and cnliie in them all. a- is the 

ease in the examples which w'e have adduced. These comparisons occasionally 

* Elected in iOU, died in 586. t In his. Annals, B. Ill . p. 333. Paris.. 



T>76 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

employed bv tho Fathers, and which it would be unjust to examine too nicely, 
evidently prove, that they were convinced of the real presence, because they em- 
ploy them as an expedient to give some idea of the mystery, and to assist as far 
as mav be in shewing the possibility of it. Indeed, as it is impossible to discover 
atry entirely just and appropriate; it is quite allowable to produce such as ap- 
proach the nearest to it. 

As your teachers dispute with us only the first six centuries, it would be need- 
less to continue this traditional chain to the middle of the eleventh century, when, 
fertile first time, the Catholic doctrine was directly attacked by Berengarius. 
The voice of the Christian universe was raised against him: eight successive 
couucils, from 1053 to 1079, were assembled to extirpate so dangerous and un- 
heard-of an error. Berengarius, after a too protracted obstinacy and many ter- 
giversations, had the happiness to retract his heresy before bis death. His last 
words have been transmitted to us by one of your countrymen, William of 
Malmesbury.* "Although Berengarius had changed his sentiments, he could not 

bring back to the truth those whom his false doctrine had infected Winn 

Berengarius himself was on the point of expiring, f on the feast of the Epiphany, 
the unfortunate persons whom he had corrupted in his younger day and in the 
first fervor of his sect, rushed into his mind, and he exclaimed, heaving a deep 
sigh : Jesus Christ, my God, and my Master, will appear to me on this day of 
his apparition, and will, I hope, make me partaker of his glory, because of my 
repentance; although I fear at the same time, that he may send me to punish- 
ment, because of the impenitence of those whom I have infected with my error. 
As for myself, being persuaded, both by the authority of the ancient Church, and 
bv so many recent miracles, which we have seen in our days, 1 believe, that after 
the benediction of the priest, these mysteries become the true body and blood of 
the Saviour of the world." 

1 will conclude these numerous quotations by the opinion and testimony of a 
man, who is considered, in protestant societies, as having been the light of his 
a°-e4 "Since the ancients, to whom the Church, not without reason, gives so 
much authority, are all agreed in the opinion, that the true substance of the 
body and blood of Jesus Christ is in the Eucharist : since, in addition to all this, 
has been added the constant authority of the Synods, and so perfect an agree- 
ment of the Christian world, let us also agree with them in this heavenly mj s- 
terv, and let us receive here below the bread and the chalice of the Lord under 
the veil of the species, until we eat and drink him without veil in the kingdom 
of God. And would that those, who have followed Berengarius in his error, 
would follow him in his repentance." 

And in his letter to Pellican of Alsace, |] who from being guardian of the Cor- 
deliers of Bale, became a Lutheran, went to Zurich, and there married, and died: 
'• You were of opinion, that it should be maintained that the body of the Lord 
is in the Eucharist, and that we must leave to God to the manner of its presence. 
But I did not agree with you upon that point; for I said, that indeed this plain 
and simple declaration would remove great labyrinths of difficulties ; but that it 
was a crime in a Christian not to acquiesce in the authority ol the councils, and 

*Gesta Anglorum L. III. t He died Jan. 6, J088, aged 90. JErasmus Preface to 
the Treatise on the Eucharist by B. Alger, published by Erasmus. 11 In iaiX. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 377 

in what the consent of all Churches and all nations has approved for so many 
ages. 1 have always declared that I could not leave this opinion, and what still 
more confirms me in it, is, that the Evangelists and Apostles very clearly men- 
tion the body that is given and the blood that is shed, and that it appears to be 
wonderfully worthy of the ineffable love of God towards man, that having re- 
deemed him by the body and blood of his Son, he should still further choose to 

nourish him by his flesh and blood in an ineffable manner I read in the sacred 

scriptures, This is my body, which shall be given for you; this is my blood, which 
shall be shed for you. Let them say where they have read, this ia not my body, 
but the figure of my body ; this ia not my blood but the sign of my blood. They 
torment themselves to shew that the name of a thing may be given to its sign; 
But, pray, what is there in all they say, to make me abandon a dogma, which 
the Catholic Church has been teaching for so many ages ? Should I not be out- 
rageously mad, if, after the decisions of the Church, I were not afraid to assert, 

that there is nothing but bread in the Eucharist ? It is the Church, that has 

iled me to believe in the Gospel; the Church that has taught me how to 
interpret the words of the Gospel. Up to the present time, I have adored, to- 
gether with all Christians, in the Eucharist, the same Jesus Christ who suffered 
for me the death of the cross, and I see not now why I should change my con- 
duct. No human reasons shall ever prevail upon me to abandon the unanimous 
sentiment of all Christianity. For my mind is more touched with these words, 
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, than with all the arguments 
df Aristotle and of all the philosophers, by which they teach that the world had 
no beginning. If your mind is agitated with doubts and perplexities, as you 
confess, it is because you make no account of the popes and the councils. My 
mind is confirmed in the faith, by the consent of the Catholic Church. And if 
you are persuaded, that there is nothing more in the Eucharist than bread and 
wine, 1 for my part must declare to you, that I should prefer being torn in pieces 
limb from limb, to follow your opinion, and that there is no torment I would not 
willingly endure, rather than leave this world after having committed so great a 
crime against the testimony of my own conscience." 

Perhaps you will reproach me for fatiguing you with so many quotations: 
but I can assure yon that, to spare your patience, I have confined myself to a 
part, only of those that have come under my observation. I conceived that these 
would suffice by their clearness and the eminence of the personages from whom 
they are taken, to remove every doubt from your minds Respecting their particu- 
lar belief. 1 am convinced that the most skilful of our divines, were they to at- 
tempt at this time to give you an explanation of our mysteries, would discover 
nothing to Bay more exact, powerful and energetic than what the greater part of 
t;,. - I athert have Bald, and would only have to repeal the ax] re sions of these 
great luminaries of the Church. I am convinced even that, every protestantwbo, 
irith honest sincerity, shall seek before God to ascei tain, from the fathers, the 
belief of the first ages respecting the Eucharist, must find it from their testimo- 
■iet ! rack Lj tin- same BS Catholics now profess and will continue to pro&SE to 

the Bad of ti • 

And yet there arc found in protestanf communities men of great knowledge 
who unfortunately employ the fertility of their genius and the subtlety Of their 

32* 



378 ON THE CIUKC1I OF ENGLAND 

mind in inventing turns and explanations to elude the evidence of the force of 
these testimonies I How omnipotent is the t3'ranny of prejudice over ns! Hpw 
lamentably are we influenced by vanity and the empty glory of supporting the 
cause in which we find ourselves engaged! Conscience and good sense are often 
subjected to their dominion, so that in our discussions, obstinacy takes the place 
of that candor of which w e are so proud on other occasions, leads us to find doubt 
in what would appear as irresistible evidence, were we engaged in the opposite 
cause. These skillful divines therefore have invented turns and modes of expres- 
sion to explain what neither bears nor needs explanation, in order to substitute 
obscurities for that which is as clear as the day. They have ransacked all the 
Writing's of the Fathers, to oppose passage to passage, to combat whatever is 
found decisive and peremptory in them by what they have sometimes written 
doubtful and enigmatical. This manoeuvre the}' have more particularly employed 
against St. Augustin. But how deserving of our pity is such a disposition ! 
If, as they affirm, truth is the object of their enquiry, why not candidly acknowl- 
edge that a single passage of St. Augustin's evidently shews his own doctrine 
and that of the whole Church, where he testifies that no one eats of this flesh itho 
lia< not first adored it? Why not acknowledge that he was, more than the other 
Fathers, surrounded with pagans, whom his eloquence made most eager to hear 
him and read his writings: that consequently, he was more shackled by the dis- 
cipline of secrecy, which he so frequently repeats, as if anxious to forwarn us of 
his embarrassment in developing his thoughts. On these critical and frequent 
occasions he covered the mysteries but did not annihilate them : he skillfully 
managed to speak of them so as to withhold them from the eyes of the uninitiated, 
while he left them open to the knowledge of the faithful. This is the truth and 
the real fact: this is what should be acknowledged. Why not acknowledge that 
he had a hundred times assisted at the liturgies of Milan : that he himself at 
Hippo, had day by day repeated at the altar those pathetic and inflaming prayers 
in which every thing speaks of the oblation, of the sacrifice, of the adoration, 
of the victim present by the change of substance ; that it was this he so often 
found himself obliged to conceal and which he effectually concealed, but with 
great skill and without detriment to the dogma? In fine, why not acknowledge, 
on the one hand, that this circumspection, these enigmas and veils, would have 
been without aim or object, if he had thought with the modern Cal vinist, because, in 
that case, he would have had nothing to conceal, but every thing to discover : 
and on the other hand, that he could not have rejected or disowned our mysteries 
without contradicting in his discourses and his writings what he was in the habit 
of practising with an angelic piety in the liturgy, and without acting a character 
in the pulpit totally opposed to the ministry he was discharging at the the altar. 

The fact is, there exists not a single passage of this great bishop, or any of the 
Fathers, which goes beyond that obscurity which circumstances required, not one 
which is not perfectly in agreement with the doctrine of the liturgies and of the 
Chinch. When you feel disposed to do so, you will find the subject at great length 
and discussed in a masterly style by the two greatest controversialists that have 
ever written on the Eucharist, Arnauld and Nicole.* 

A few words more, Sir, if you please, and I shall have completed what I had 

*PcrpctuUc de la foi def endue, 6 vol. in !to. Paris 1761. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 379 

to lay before you respecting the Eucharist. My three last letters have clearly 
laiil open to you the true sentiments of the primitive Church. Let us now com- 
pare them with those that your reformers have imputed to them ; by this means 
we shall become convinced that they themselves were ignorant of the doctrines and 
sentiments of the ancient Fathers, while they pretended to lead us back to them. 
We must not however be too hasty and severe in accusing them of an ignorance, 
which belonged to the age in which they lived, and which we ourselves should 
have shared, had we lived in their times. Let us ever bear in mind that it was 
then most easy to mislead or err, because their notions concerning Christian an- 
tiquity must still have been very imperfect. Scarcely had men begun to study 
and examine with curious and deep research the voluminous writings of the Fa- 
thers and the acts of the councils. Their first attempts must needs have led to but 
very imperfect results. Few monuments had then come to light: they remained 
for the most part dispersed in manuscripts hard to be deciphered, scattered hero 
and there in private libraries : and what a length of time has it taken to bring 
them forth to day ! what criticism and examination has been necessary to ascer- 
tain their authenticity ! what labor to class thein methodically, to compare them 
with one another, and extract from them on every point a continuity of exact 
information respecting dogma and discipline I We now enjoy all these advan- 
tages; the reformation did not: it worked in obscurity, involved in the darkness 
and clouds that still were hanging upon the sixteenth century, and which were 
not entirely removed till the following century was far advanced. You must 
not therefore be surprised at discovering that the reformation, whilst it fondly 
considered itself as approaching nearer to the primitive doctrine, banished itself 
to so great a distance from it. 

The general ignorance which prevailed at that time respecting Christian an- 
tiquity, has been frankly acknowledged by one of the best informed, and perhaps 
the most learned man of his time among the followers of the reformation. Cha- 
tillon makes the acknowledgment in those terms : * " Certainly to speak the truth, 
our age is still buried in the thick darkness of ignorance. The manifest proof 
of thi- appears in our important, obstinate and fatal discussions; in our numerous 
ami ever unsuccessful conferences to settle our disputes: and. in fine, in the mul- 
titude of work~ which are every day appearing, and which come to an agree- 
ment upon nothing If the [jure day of truth," continues he, " was shining 

upon it-, should we still be groping by the sombre and dull light of these obscure 
productions?" 

Hut to confine ourselves to the Encharistic dogmas, what more incontestable 
proof can there be of a general mistake, than to behold, as regards the real 
■ ■■. a balfofthe reformed, and, as regards the change of substance, the 
whole reformation, imagining that these dogmas were unknown to the first ages, 
whereas it i- bo well proved in our days that the Christians of that bappj age, 
scrupulously cherished and fostered them in their hearts in the midst of the un- 
initiated: and whereas, in celebrating the liturgy among themselves, they pro- 
claimed them by a lively and profound adoration, and taught and developed them 
to their neophytes, with all the clearness and energy of expression at their 
command? 

* < i t lie., pra?f. Iliblior. 



380 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

How many particular examples might I not here produce of the errors and 
illusions, into which the most "jilted of the reformers have fallen, for want of a 
sufficient acquaintance with antiquity ? The few following appear to me rathet 
Striking:* " CEcolampadius, having written to Melanchton that the opinion of 
the Churches of Switzerland on the Eucharist was not contrary either to the Holy 
Scripture or the Fathers, Melanchton made a collection of passages from the Fa- 
thers, which he considered as favorable to him, and addressed it to Frederick 
Miconius, with a very warm epistle, in which he speaks with acrimony of Car- 

lostadtius, considering him as the head of the sacramentarians and adding 

with an air of contempt that his adversaries knew only of two passages from the 
Fathers to allege in their favor. CEcolampadius put an end to this boasting by a 

dialogue in which he collected a quantity of passages from the Fathers, and 

some even which Melanchton had not seen, to prove that the opinion of our 
Churches was the same with that of the ancient Christians. 

" This book of CEcolampadius, continues our historian and Swiss professor of 
the belles-lettres, "did much good and brought back many persons of learning. 
It also softened down Melanchton" who was much moved by it. This great man 
began to open his eyes, and recover a little from the violence of his prejudices ; 
so much so, that from this time he applied himself afresh to the study of eccle- 
siastical antiquity, and scarcely did any thing else for six years but consult the 
Fathers upon this matter. Bucer pronounced this work of CEcolampadius to be 
excellent, and was desirous that every person interested in this dispute should 
take the trouble to read it and meditate carefully upon it." 

Ife who is well acquainted with this subject, and you, Sir, who have just read 
our last letters, will consider it as beyond all doubt that Melanchton, although 
enveloped in the same obscurity with the rest, had nevertheless guessed right, 
and had caught a glimpse of the real sentiments of the Fathers, while CEcolam- 
padius, led astray by a heap of text misunderstood, was blundering at every 
step. And how then did the matter end ? Boor Melanchton conceives himself 
to be fairly refuted, returns from his prejudices, as they called them, and applies 
himself again for six continued years to the study of the Fathers : Bucer, Bolin- 
ger, with a host of other.learned investigators, not to mention our rhetorician 
and historian M. Ruchat, stand in astonishment at CEcolampadius's wonderful 
production, and thenceforward are fully convinced that the holy Fathers had 
actually and unceasingly thought and taught according to the Swiss divinity. 
From this example you may form some judgment of the ecclesiastical knowledge 
with which the reformers were blessed at this epoch of confusion and uproar. 

Again it is to be remarked, that CEcolampadius in vain attempted to convince 
these clear-sighted and fastidious theologians, for he never succeeded in satisfying 
and convincing himself. "As far as 1 can conjecture from the writings of the 
Fathers," says he in a letter to Zuinglius.t "the words, This u my body, ought 
to be understood of the figure. Beseech God that he would vouchsafe to open 
thy eyes, and mine also, if I am misled, that we may not fall into error, with 
the peril of so many souls. Whilst attending the disputation at Berne,:} he 

* Hlstoire de la reformation de la Suisse par. Abraham Ruchat, professeur de 
belles-Irttres a Lauzanne, Tom. III. p. inn, edit. Geneve, I7-J7. t Lib. III. F.pi-t. 
quoted in Florim. p. 175. } Scliluss T/tcol. Calvin, lib. I!, p. C8, quoted by Florim. 
ibid. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 381 

evinced considerable doubt and uncertainty as to the opinion on the Lord's sup- 
per, on which account one of his principal supporters withdrew from his party, 
having heard hiui praying in his closet: my God! if our opinion on the 
Lord's supper be correct, take it, I beseech thee, into thy protection. It was 
Cellarius who would not risk his salvation upon the if of his master." CEcolam- 
padius, still agitated with doubts and fears, said a little before his death : "lam 
about to appear before the tribunal of my God, to render an account of my doc- 
trine whether true or false."* 

But we must not as yet desert the compiler of the Swiss reformation, M. 
Ruchat,f who, it is to be hoped, was better versed in the belles-lettres than in 
history and theology. He will now furnish us with a fresh proof that, although 
in his native country much was said about the ancient Fathers, very little indeed 
was known. " In the disputation at Lausanna, Mimard, the Catholic, had asked 
the ministers, whether they pretended to be more learned and more enlightened 
by the Holy Spirit than the holy doctors Augustin, Jerome, Ambrose and Greg- 
ory, who all believed in the real presence? Farel took him severely to task, 

and maintained that he greatly displayed his ignorance by pretending that St. 
Augustin and the other Fathers whom he had mentioned had believed in the 

real presence, without producing a single passage in support of his assertion 

To all these great names he opposed the prophets, the evangelists and apostles, 
who never had taught any thing of what is said in the mass." It must be al- 
lowed, by v, ay of excuse for Farel and his brother reformers, whose sentiments 
he expressed in their presence, that in general the liturgies were at that time but 
very imperfectly known, and the oriental liturgies not known at all. Farel after- 
wards cites some passages from St. Augustin and St. Jerome, and continues in 
these words 4 "Since St. Augustin and St. Jerome, say as we say, how dare 
you thus shamefully lay to our charge that we alone act and think in opposition 
to all ? Learn to be more wise and to hold a different language ; for jou go too 
magisterially to work w ithout either scripture or reason. It is not sufficient 
therefore to say : Examine and see what St. Augustin and others have written. 
Were they alive, they would answer you well, without saying where you must 
look and examine. This is speaking in the air and a betraying of ignorance." 

It would appear that poor Mimard took it all for granted : we do not find that 
he made any reply to Farel : I suspect they were both about equally stored with 
erudition. But here conies Calvin who, after having long kept silence, is going 
to In' sik it once again; he rises to complete the overthrow of this rash oppo- 
nent.|| 11- tells him that "he had no business to accuse the ministers of despis- 
ing the ancient and holy doctors, since they were in the habit of reading and 

studying them Those who make a show of respecting them, frequently do not 

hold them in as uiu'li estimation us wo do," adds he, "neither do they conde- 
KjBnd to emploj the time in reading their works, which we gladly employ in it... 
It would be easy for him to shew that the ancient and holy doctors agreed with 
the ministers ou tl"- controverted points of doctrine; but that for brevity's sake, 
lie would confine himself to the subject of the present dispute, which was the- 
real presence." Upon this he boldly quotes some words from Tertullian, St. 

•li>id. ibid. fTom. V). p. IG. r >, l67,d'apreslesactesoriginaux, (D'apreslesactes 
orgmuux. I, Ibid. p. 177, L89. 



S82 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Chrysostom, and above all, from St. Augustine, to the extreme satisfaction, as may 
be easily conceived, of bis bretheni of the reformation, of the deputies from 
some of the cantons, of the members of the council, who were all sitting in this 
assembly in quality of lay -judges in revealed matters, and as sovereign arbiters 
of the dispute carried on between mere priests, and monks whether still retain- 
ing their habits or not. Such, Sir, was the extent of their knowledge of vener- 
able antiquity in those times. In Switzerland and on the continent similar ig- 
norance prevailed. Do you think that men were more enlightened on these sub- 
jects in your island? You yourself shall judge from the following specimen, 
which shall be the last I will produce. 

In 15G2 appeared an apology for the Church of England, written in latin by 
bishop Jewel, approved by his brother divines, published by the authority of the 
Supreme Governess, translated immediately into several languages, and circulated 
through all the States of Europe, where it was highly applauded by all those who 
were fond of changes and novelties.- The Editor of the English edition* tells us 
that it is not to be considered as the work of a private individual, but as a creed f 
and confession of the protestant faith. The principal object of the apology is to 
make known the real motives that induced England to separate from Rome. In 
it are the following passages. 

" Now, if we proved and that not obscurely and craftily but in good faith be- 
fore God, truly, ingenuously, clearly and evidently, that the most holy Gospel, 
the ancient bishops and primitive Church, agree with us, and that we have not 
without reason renounced the popish tenets, and returned to the apostles, and to 
the ancient Catholic Fathers ; and if those persons, who detest our doctrine, and 
pride themselves on the name of Catholic, shall be clearly convinced that all their 
titles of antiquity, of which they so immoderately boast, belong not to them ; 
and that there is more strength in our cause than they have been willing to allow; 
then we devoutly hope, that not one of them will be so careless of his salvation, 
as not duly and painfully to deliberate to which party he ought to belong." || 

"Or perhaps they will affirm that St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Gelasius, 

Theodoret, St. Chrysostoni and Origen never declared the sacramental bread and 
wine to continue what they were in their unconsecrated state, never said that 
what we behold on the Lord's table is bread ; that the substance of the bread 
and nature of the wine remain altogether and entirely unchanged. These are the 
doctrines we have been taught by Christ, by the apostles, by the holy Fathers; 
these unaltered, uncorrupted we teach the people of God ; and for this cause 
indeed it is that we are this day stigmatized as heretics by this usurper of reli- 
gious authority. O Eternal God ! And has Christ, have the apostles, have so 
many Fathers, all been involved together in the same error? Where Origen, 
St. Ambrose, St. Augustin, St. Chrysostom, Gelasius, Theodoret, all apostates 
from the Catholic faith ? Was the singular unanimity of so many venerable 
bishops and learned men only an heretical conspiracy ? Are we to be condemned 
for maintaining those sentiments, which gained them so much approbation ? Has 

* Lift of Jewel prefixed to the Apology Edit, in 8vo. London, 1685; p. 31. t Ab 
uno disce omnev. JThis and the following passages from the Apolngy are taken 
from a recent translation of that work by the Rev. Stephen Isaacson, B. A. of Christ's 
College, Cambridge, London, 1825.— Tr. || Page 57. 



AWa THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 383 

that, which in them was Catholic, now suddenly with the veering breath of hu- 
man caprice, become schismatical ?"* 

What think you now sir of this tirade? Was such confident assurance ever 
displayed in so important and complete a mistake? To appeal so confidently to 
an authority by which one is to be condemned ! To call upon witnesses who 
have the strongest evidence against us! To boast about the Fathers, while one 
is really opposed to them ! This cannot be conceived or explained, except by the 
imperfect knowledge men then had of their writings, and the false notions they 
had adupted of their true and real doctrine. 

The apologist is incessantly appealing to the primitive Church ; on every ques- 
tion he has recourse to the authority of the Fathers, always taking them in the 
wrong sense, without appearing to have ever understood them, because he never 
made himself sufficiently acquainted with them. From among a hundred pas- 
sages proving this, 1 must request you to read the following, in which the plan 
of the reformation is laid out on the principles which 1 have constantly admitted 
in our discussion. 

•• We indeed, as has before been asserted, have proceeded in our reformation, 
with the utmost caution ; neither has a passion for novelty or innovation biassed 
us : we have advanced step by step ; and have proved all things, and weighed 
them in the scale of impartiality and of an unprejudiced judgment. Neither 
should we ever have been induced to undertake this necessary reformation of re- 
lijt'in, had not the manifest will of God, revealed in the holy scriptures, united 
with fears for our own salvation, absolutely compelled us to it. For although we 
have separated ourselves from the Church, to which they absurdly gave the name 

of Catholic yet we are satisfied that we have only departed from a 

Church, which can assert no just claim to infallibility, nay, which Christ, who is 
truly infallible, long before her corruptions, predicted would fall into errors: and 
into which errors we ourselves have ocular demonstration that she has fallen, in 
her long continued apostacy from the faith of the venerable Fathers of the 
Christian religion, of the apostles, of Christ himself; and from the doctrine and 
discipline of the primitive and Catholic Church. On the other hand, we have 
oopi '1 as exactly as wecould, the pattern of the Church as it was constituted in 
the <lavs of the apostles and early Catholic bishops and Fathers, and which we 
know was then a perfect Church, or, to use the language of Turtullian, ' An un- 
eorrapted virgin;' inasmuch as she was as yet free from any idolatry, and had 
not admitted any material or universal error in faith or practice." 

'• Veither is it with respect to doctrine alone, but in the administration of the 
sacraments, and the ritual of our public worship we have also labored to reduce 
it to the simplicity and pnritj of the Primitive Model — and by thus bringing 
back the Gospel t" its original and first state, after it had been impiously ne- 
gleited and corrupted by the Church of Home, we have only followed the exam- 
pi.- of Christ himself and all good men; and we appeal to the soundness of those 
principles which induced us to refer to the Original Model as the only criterion 
of our reformation ; for the principle, says that most holy Father Tertullian, 
must always bold good in judging of heretical opinions! 'The Original itself is 
true; each later copj is leas genuine.' [renaeus often appealed to the examples 

• PBRPS 57, 5H, 59. 



384 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of the most ancient Churches, as being nearer to the apostolic age; and therefore 
less subject to corruptions and innovations. And why is this great principle 
now deserted ! Why do not we also return to the examples of the early Churches? 
Why may not we act according to the principles maintained without the least 
opposition by the numerous bishops and Catholic Fathers in the Council of Nice, 
that ' Ancient institutions should be esteemed inviolable.' "* 

You have seen so far, and to the end of this discussion you will have occasion 
to observe, that the reformation suppressed or changed nothing of importance 
but what was believed and practised in the first ages : and if it was desirous of 
bringing us back to the faith and practice of antiquity, as it was always pro- 
tecting on every occasion, it is unfortunate that it should unwittingly have done 
precisely the contrary to what it intended to do. But let us come to the pre- 
cious morsel of the same apologist in a sermon which he had preached two or 
three years before t at St. Paul's-cross, London, and which, we are assured, he 
frequently repeated afterwards. In it he has surpassed himself: the language 
will astonish you. 

After speaking in high strains on antiquity, as being confident that in the work 
of the reformation they had clung close to the sacred scripture, the holy Fathers, 
the doctors and councils ; after asserting that they had merely rejected modern 
errors, and that the only dispute between the reformed and us was that we de- 
fended novel opinions, and that they admitted none but the old ones, he exclaims: 
" merciful God, who would think there could be so much willfulness in the 
heart of man! Gregory! Augustin! Hierome! Chrysostom 1 Leol 
O Dionise! Anacletus! Sixtus! Paul! Christ! If we are deceived 
herein, ye are they that have deceived us. You have taught us these schisms 
and divisions, ye have taught us these heresies !"£ 

Afterwards drawing up a long catalogue of controverted articles, and among 
other things denying that for the six first ages it was ever taught that the body 
of Christ was really and substantially present in the sacrament; that his body 
was or could be in many places at the same time ; that after the words of conse- 
cration there remained only the visible species, and not the substance of the 
bread and wine : and that it was the common practice among the faithful to fall 
on their knees before the blessed sacrament and pay divine adoration to Christ 
there present, he proceeds in these words: " If any learned man of all our ad- 
versaries, or of all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one suffi- 
cient sentence out of any o.d Catholic doctor or Father ; or out of any old general 
council; Or out of the holy scriptures of God; or any one example of the primi- 
tive Church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved, that there was any 
private masse in the whole world, for the space of six hundred years after Christ, 
&c I promised then that I would give over and subscribe to him." || 

This challenge appears in our days ridiculous enough, because we are now per- 
fectly acquainted with the doctrine of the first centuries. But at that time when 

* Pages 2-11, 242, 243. tThe Copie of a Sermon preached by the Bishop nf Silis- 
hurie al Paul's-Crosse the Second Sunday before Easter, in the year of our Lord God 
1560, &e. In the works of the very Learned and Reverend Father in God, John Jewel, 
&o. London, Printed by John Norton, Printer to the King's most Excellent Majesiie 
16U9. t Page 57. || Page 58. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 385 

the doctrine of the first ages was so very little known, it passed as a splendid 
and undeniable proof of his superior genius and consummate knowledge. The il- 
lusion, however, was not of long continuance. Harding, Dolman and Stapleton 
took up the glove, and made an exposure of Jewel's lolly by works which would 
have opened the eyes of many, had they not been immediately prohibited. It is 
true that, since the progress of.knowledge, protectants have often reproached their 
apologist for insisting so much upon the authority of the Fathers and the primi- 
tive Church. But it must be acknowledged that, with the false confidence that 
blinded Jewel, he could not have followed a more logical course, or one more 
conformable with the principles of sound theology, and that, supposing antiquity 
had really been on his side, his triumph would have been certain and complete. 
If he was sincere, which is possible, God knows: and if he were to return into 
tire world: he would be indispensably bound, according to his engagement, to 
reascend the pulpit in St. Paul's proud basilic and publicly subscribe to the 
Catholic belief, and invite all England to do the same. * 

The new principles of the reformation, conceived hastily and confusedly in the 
darkness of ignorance, then defended by divines of considerable celebrity, adopted 
by the blind confidence of their followers, transmitted from father to son, and 
strengthened every day by authoritative instruction, at last acquired the complexion 
and consistency of truth, and cast the minds of men into a profound but fatal re- 
poee and security. Thenceforward they looked no farther, and would not listen 
t» any thing that could be said against their deep-rooted opinions. This is the 
Uk> Common effect of prejudice : in vain does the light shine around them: they 
turn from it as if its dazzling splendor was an unsupportable pain to them, as if 
fhey were determined to close their eyes forever against it. Instead of listening 
witli attention to the positive proof that such a dogma has been revealed by 
Jesus *'ln i-t. they will prefer believing, on the word of their teachers, that the 
Church, by inserting it among the articles of faith, lias entirely forfeited its title 



t An anecdote, which I read lately in an author deserving of credit, permits me not 
to place much reliance on Jewel. " When he found his end approaching, lie sent 
for Gerbraiid, his chaplain, and enjoined him to publish after his death, that what- 
ever he had written against the Catholic doctrine, he had written against his con- 
science and the truth, merely to pay his court to the Queen, and to support the re- 
ligion which she had introduced. Although Gerbrand never did publicly declare it, 
lie communicated it to many private persons, among others to a physician named 
Twin, who was residing not long ago at Lewes, and who related it to two Catholic no- 
biemen, front wnom I learned the fact. It is now forty years since I published it in 
print (t'a prudentittli bilance.) Twin and these two Catholic noblemen were then 
living, and up to this lime nobody has contradicted the report. Now, the English 
protectants, holding Jewel in such estimation, are looking on him as their shield and 
protection, would undoubtedly have given the lie 10 the anecdote, had they not 
been well aware of its truth. And more: in the Ufeof Jewel, p. 101, Humphrey 
says, that a rumor had gone abroad thai his hero had, before ins death, abjured the 
f.nth of antiquity to become papist again. What could five ri le to Buch a rumor, but 
tin' Injunction given to his chaplain V" See Florvs hist. evil, gent it angl. Lib. I., cap, 
XIII. p. ;T,. (Paris 1553, in fob, Bibliot, royal) by Dr. SmiUt, bihhop of Chalcedon, 
wiiu wrote this work at the advanced age of eight] i i en. 
:i:< 



380 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to infallibility.* Is there a more disheartening and melancholy function than 
that in which a minister dedicates himself to the enlightening a people who will 
not be enlightened? Of what use is it to have consumed one's time and strength 
in serving them ? of what use to have laboriously searched out the passages of 
the Fathers about the Eucharist, to have brought them forward in their natural 
order and thus to have produced a most satisfactory agreement, and an irresisti- 
ble effulgency of ancient evidence ? They do not read even Bossuet ; and do you 
expect to get your evidence read ! have I often said to myself, and then flung the 
pen from my hand. Have I done wrong in resuming it? and shall I have labored 
in vain for so many of my mistaken brethren ? I shall at least have fulfilled the 
duty to the performance of which I have thought myself more particularly 
called. 

* Vel sota transubstantiatio Bomaner Ecchsiee fundamentum diruit (Nubes Testivm, 
by J. Alphonsus Turretinus, p. 41, Edit, in 4to. Gen. 1719.) Such a sentiment deliv- 
ered with magisterial authority is for young disciples an oracle, the effect of which 
they never recover. Two hundred years earlier, some excuse might have be<»n found 
for the Genevan professor, but at the epoch when he was writing and dictating lessons 
of theology, it is unpardonable to have heen ignorant that the most splendid genuises 
of antiquity had taught this dogma, and that the primitive Church had believed it, 
as we also believe it together with her. How came he not to know, that Faustus 
Socinus candidly acknowledges the same in a letter to his friend, (Epist. ad. Rade- 
cium, torn. I. p. 381, edit. 1636.) " If we must in this matter abide by the Fathers, 
our cause is lost ;" that Luther for a long time approved of and permitted transub- 
stantiation ; and that the confes>ion of Wittemberg made no difficulty in declaring: 
" We believe the power of God to be so great, that it can in the Eucharist destroy 
the substance of bread and the substance of wine, and change them into his own 
body and blood,"&c. &c. &c. Page 44, an. 1536. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 387 

LETTER XI. 

Confession. 

If the article I propose for our discussion this day were not 
necessary for salvation, I would yield to the extreme repugnance 
you have often testified towards it, and pass over in silence a 
subject which hitherto has inspired you with nothing but feelings 
of estrangement and alarm. "What! would you have me re- 
veal to a man like myself all the irregularities of my life and 
all my secret sins known to Grod alone ! must I expose the shame 
of my conduct and most secret thoughts ! give a full detail of the 
disorders which I have so carefully concealed from the world, 
and which I could wish, were it possible to erase from the mem- 
ory of my accomplices and even from my own ! must I lay open 
my secret intentions my motives and mad desires, the very re- 
membrance of which still cover me with unutterable confusion ! 
No, Sir, it is more than I can submit to : the humiliation is 
quite intolerable ; and, though you should demonstrate every 
Other article of your religion ; this alone of confession would for 
ever withhold me from your communion." This language is 
alarming, but it does not at all surprise me. Such expressions 
and a similar aversion are common to you with many others. 
When discussing the subject of religion, I have found them in 
numbers of your countrymen, some of whom I have had the 
consolation to see enter our communion, although for a length of 
feline alarmed and scared by this ultimate obstacle. I have found 
them BOmetimeS in myself: there are few Catholics who will not 
make to you the same confession; few who cannot tell you how 
much it has cost them, on certain occasions, to surmount the 
shame and suggestions of humbled self-love. It is also to be 
feared that there are but too many examples among us of per- 
suns who, after having at length summoned the courage to ap- 
proach the confessional, have not had resolution enough to com- 



388 u.N THE CHURCH OE ENGLAND 

plete at the feet of the priest the painful recital uf their crimes, 
and who have been led on by a false shame to the commission of 
sacrilege. 

But what will you say, Sir, if I undertake to lead you to con- 
fession by the very sentiment which scares you the most away 
from it? Such, however, is my intention : you are about to fiud 
it turned into a proof against you. From this natural repug- 
nance, experienced in all ages, it appears to me that a powerful 
consequence may be deduced ; and lest it should escape us in the 
course of this discussion, it shall be introduced here at the out- 
set. In fact, if you will reflect, the aversion that we all feel 
against this most humiliating act of repentance, has so imperious 
an ascendency over our minds, that no earthly power could ever 
succeed in compelling us to surmount it. Imagine to yourself 
the most absolute monarch, the most ancient and universal coun- 
cil, and you have all that is most imposing belonging to earth or 
heaven : yet these would never succeed by their own authority, 
either in forcing this act of obedience, 1 or in persuading us to 

1 We know that after having set aside the divine precept of confessiou, and 
abolished its usage, the magistrates of Nuremberg, quickly terrified at the prev- 
alence of crime within their town, had recourse to Charles V., the most powerful 
monarch of Europe, requesting him to send forth an imperial decree for the re- 
establishment of auricular confession. But the precept of God being once trod- 
den under loot, what could these magistrates expect from a monarch, who, 
although he possessed the power to bend their knees, had not the power to open 
their consciences? Charles V. treated their petition as it deserved. 

It may be a matter of curiosity and surprise to an Englishman to find the above 
mode of argumentation, discussed by the pen of one of his ancient sovereigns, 
Henry VII I. " Put the Case, that not one Word was particularly, or figuratively 
read of Confession nor any Thing spoken of it by the Holy Fathers; Yet when I 
consider that all People have discovered their Sins to the Priests, for so many 
Ages; when I consider the Good that continually follows the practice of it. and 
no Evil at all; I cannot think, or believe it to be established, or upholded by 
any human Invention, but by the divine Order of God. For the People could. 
never, by any human Authority, be induced to discover their secret Sins which 
they abhor in their Consciences, and which they are so much concerned to conceal, 
with such Shame and Confusion, and so undoubtedly to a man that might, when 
he pleased, betray them. Neither could it happen, that among such great Num- 
bers of Prie»l$, some good, and some bad, indifferently hearing Coiifemtiom, they 
should all retain them; and that also, when some of them can keep Nothing else 
secret; if God himself, the Author of the Sacrament did not, by his special 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 389 

submit to this odious yoke. The command must absolutely have 
come from heaven ; from Him who reads the heart and rules the 
conscience; and the first Christians must have heard it from 
Jesus Christ himself, or his apostles. They must have been 
firmly convinced, that according to the ordinance of Christ, there 
is no pardon to be expected for sins committed after baptism, ex- 
cept by the voluntary acknowledgment of them to his ministers. 
and the Christians of every age, for all have sinned, and the 
greater part grievously, must have felt themselves in the inevi- 
table alternative of sacrificing, either shame to salvation, or sal- 
vation to shame. Observe again that the children of the refor- 
mation shook off the yoke of confession, as soon as they under- 
stood from their leaders that it was nothing more than a purely 
ecclesiastical institution : so true it is, that in the beginning, men 
could never have submitted to it upon any other ground than 
considering it as a divine precept. You may seek, as long as you 
please, for some other origin of a practice, the very idea of 
which alarms self-love ; to me it appears impossible to find any 
other than the express command of Jesus Christ. 

Accordingly, he has given this command. 1 So we are taught 
by the Church, and this is sufficient to oblige all to believe it, 
according to the doctrine we have solidly established. But since 
upon this subject, as well as upon preceding ones, you require of 
me to justify her decrees, let us again examine the double deposit 
of revelation, and see whether scripture and tradition actually 
teach that confession was instituted by Jesus Christ as a neces- 
sary means for obtaining the pardon of sins committed after 
baptism. We read in St. Matthew 2 , that our Saviour promised 
his apostles that whatsoever they should bind on earth, should be 
b »und also in heaven; and that whatsoever they should loose on 
earth, should fee loosed also in neaveri. We read in St. John 3 , 
th.it, after bis resurrection and before his return to his Father, 

Grace, defend this so wholesome a Tiling. For my Part, let Luther say what 
he Will, 1 will believe that ( 'nuf< «>'o» u -as in.-titutrd, and is preserved by God 

himself; nol by any Custom of the People, or Institution of the Fathers.'* j) e . 

/'. ,!'■<■ of the Seven Swframents, 'The Holy Scripture. 'Ch. xviii. 18. 3 Ch. 
xx. 73. 

88* 



390 UN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

he confirmed his promise; and in order that the world might 
have nothing to say against the prerogative to which the apostle 
would boldly lay claim of forgiving sins, he establishes the right 
he confers upon them on his own heavenly mission, and invests 
them with the power he had received from his Father. "As 
the Father hath sent me I also send you. When he had said 
this he breathed on them ; and he said unto them : Receive ye 
the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven ; 
and whose sins you shall retain they are retained." And be- 
cause the work which our Saviour was come to establish was to 
be as durable as the world : and the power of remitting or re- 
taining sins was not to be less necessary in the course and till the 
consummation of this work, thau in its establishment, it cannot 
be doubted that in the person of the apostles, our Saviour had 
an eye to their successors, just the same as he had in the other 
command: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc." 
Now the power he confers upon them, before his ascension, con- 
sists not merely in forgiving sins, but in forgiving or retaining 
them, whence it follows that this power must be exercised with 
prudence and discretion, lest they should forgive when they ought 
to retain, or retain when they ought to forgive. It is a judg- 
ment of clemency or rigor which the ministers have to pro- 
nounce, according as they consider that the sins can or cannot as 
yet be pardoned. But how are they to come to a reasonable 
decision as to whether they can or cannot forgive the sins : unless 
they know them well, and not only their numbers and quality, 
but also whatever may considerably aggravate or extenuate 
them, and moreover, the natural dispositions of the sinners? It 
is evident that all this is indispensably necessary for enlightening 
the mind, and directing the minister to pass a just sentence. 
Now, as spiritual judges have not the privilege of reading the 
thoughts and the heart of man any more than the judges of the" 
landrthey cannot arrive at a sufficient knowledge of all these 
circumstances by any other means than by the frank and volun- 
tary declaration of the sinner himself: and this is precisely what 
we call confession. You see it is so essentially connected with 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 391 

the judicial power given by Christ to bis ministers, that, without 
it, it would be altogether impossible for them to exercise their 
functions. 

To this simple and natural mode of argumentation, the follow- 
ers of the reformation have often replied, that the power given 
by our Saviour to the apostles was not that of judging, but 
merely that of declaring that sins are forgiven or retained. But 
whence, let me ask, do they gain this idea? Do they find it in 
the Scripture ? In the sacred books there is not a single word 
about this passive and declaratory ministry. Jesus Christ does 
not say whose sins you shall declare to be forgiven, but whose 
sius you shall forgive, and whose sins you shall retain. Between 
the two there is a manifest and essential difference. Our 
•Saviour's words are too clear to need any explanation : the sub- 
stitution of this declaratory sense, in place of the plain and ob- 
vious meaning of the passage, is an audacious and sacrilegious 
attempt to take away from Christ his own words, and to put the 
words of man into his mouth, as if he could have made use of a 
false or incorrect expression. And, after all, what more is 
gained by it, than throwing back the difficulty a little ? For 
h'iw is a minister to declare that sins are forgiven or retained, 
unless he knows the sins? Is he to declare the sins to be for- 
given on the vague and general assurance given by the penitent 
of his repentance? But supposing that the sinner deceives you, 
or deceives himself, mistaking a passing emotion for a solid re- 
pentance, for you have not tried his repentance ; supposing that 
the habit is inveterate, that he is in the immediate occasion of 
sin, that he has not quitted his unlawful profession, negociation, 
o£ connection ; supposing that he has not repaired the injury 
dene by him, or restored ill-acquired goods or possessions, &a. 
Respecting all these essential points, you know nothing of his 
state. Will you, then, in such ignorance declare that God has 
forgiven him? Very possibly you ought to make quite an oppo- 
site declaration. You know nothing for certain in the case; ex- 
cept that you put forth your declaration at hazard and in the 
dark, and leave it to take its chance; and that you cannot rea- 



392 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

sonably take upon yourself to give any such decision, without a 
previous and sufficient declaration of the sins committed, and 
the actual disposition of the sinner. Here agaiu, then, accord- 
ing to your own explanation, of the words of Christ, confession 
is necessary. 

I see clearly, you will acknowledge, that the apostles and their 
successors could not remit or retain sins, without knowing them, 
and that in this point of view, confession is of divine institution. 
But I do not see how sinners are obliged to apply to the apostles 
and their successors to receive the pardon of their faults, and 
how confession is therefore to be considered necessary. Jesus 
Christ has said : Whatsoever you shall forgive or retain shall 
be forgiven or retained ; but he has not said : Whatsoever you 
shall not forgive shall not be forgiven. And yet, it seems to me" 
that he should have said so, if he had intended to oblige us to 
accuse ourselves of our faults before his ministers, for the ob- 
taining of pardon from them. 

I grant you that this negative clause is not expressly read in 
the G-ospel in so many words ; but if it is clearly deduced from 
it, you will be equally obliged to admit it, even according to the 
article of your Convocation in 1562, which declares that it re- 
ceives whatever is clearly read in the scriptures or consequentially 
drawn therefrom. You shall now judge of the correctness of our 
deduction respecting confession. If the confession of sins was 
not a necessary condition for obtaining the forgiveness of them, 
Jesus Christ must have taught some other means of obtaining 
pardon, independent of confession. You believe, according as 
you have learnt from the divines of your Church, that it is quite 
sufficient for the remission of sins, to have repented and accused 
yourself in general of them before God, without going to reveal 
them to his ministers. That this expedient is most convenient 
and comfortable cannot be denied; for thus, every siuuar is 
much at his ease, quite left to his own discretion, an! emanci- 
pated from the shame and repugnance of exposing to the priest, 
the humiliating and bitter history of his disorders. For, of two 
means, men will always choose that which is the most easy and 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 393 

which most admirably conciliates the interests of salvation and 
of self-love. After this, confession, which we have seen to be 
of divine institution falls to the ground and remains without 
honor and without effect. Moreover from its very institution, it 
would not have obtained more success. The same cause would 
have produced the same estrangement : the repugnance against 
it not being less then than since, the preference would have beeu 
given to the most convenient means, and from the very first times 
confession would have had the same fate which it has had in your 
country ; it would have been confined to books alone, and have 
been laid aside in practice. The apostles and their successors 
would have had no more right in one age than in another, to 
compel any one to make use of it. For the sinners of every 
age would have been equally authorized to reply, that, Jesus 
Christ having permitted them to confess to God alone, they 
merely acted according to the option granted to them. But you 
know, Sir, and your divines know also, whether it was thus that 
the apostles and their successors did act ; whether they ever re- 
cognized this right to choose in sinners, and whether the peni- 
tents ever laid claim to it during the golden ages of the Church. 
Conclude therefore with me, that this liberty of choice is but a 
chimera, newly invented, to give a wider range to conscience; 
and that the institution of Confession allows of no other more 
ea3y expedient. 

See now to what this system of liberty of choice conducts us : 
wc must believe that instead of subjecting penitents to his minis- 
ters in tin- paths of salvation, Jesus Christ has done quite the 
opposite, and has appointed that the jurisdiction of the dispensers 
of his mysteries should depend upon the good pleasure of the 
sinner; should be real and effective, when they think proper to 
bave recourse to it; inert and null, when they choose to with- 
draw themselves from it, and procure the pardon of their offences 
in another more convenient way. "Wo must say also that, in the 
e :onomyof the new law, the apostles, and their successor would 
have been judges of the consciences, and might not have been 
judges, ii the same time. They would have been judges, by 



394 ON TIIE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

the right given them by Christ, as we have seen : they might 
not have been judges, according to the whim of sinners, and in 
point of fact, because, if every one used his right, it might hap- 
pen that no one would choose to make use of their judgment. 

But, you will reply, whilst we deny that confession is necessa- 
ry, we make no difficulty in admitting that it is useful, and this 
is sufficient to induce penitents to have recourse to it. I deny, 
Sir, that it is sufficient, and you yourselves are an evident proof 
of its insufficiency. I have lived a long time in your country, 
and have had much intercourse with the members of the es- 
tablished Church of England and Scotland ; but never have I 
heard any of them speak of going to confess to his pastor, or that 
he had ever done it during the course of his life. And yet you 
all praise confession, and its numerous advantages ; some of 
your divines have highly eulogized it, and your rubrick recom- 
mends it. 1 But these eulogiums are only in theory and specula- 

1 According to the rubrick for communion, eight days before administering it, 
the minister shall give warning to his parishioners, and shall admonish them of 
the dispositions they are to bring to it ; that they are to be careful in examining 
their consciences, and if they have offended by will, word, or deed, that they are 

to confess themselves to Almighty God that if any of them be a blasphemer 

of God, or a hinderer or slanderer of his word, or an adulterer, or be in malice 
or envy, or in any other grievous sin, that he is to repent of his sins, or else come 
not to the holy table. " And because it is requisite that no man should come to 
the holy communion, but with a full trust in God's mercy, and with a quiet con- 
science : therefore, if there be any of you, who by this means cannot quiet his 
conscience herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel ; let him come to me, 
or to some other discreet and learned minister of God's word, and open his grief; 
that by the ministry of God's holy word he may receive the benefit of absolution, 
together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, and 
avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness." 

And in the visitation of the sick, the minister is enjoined to move the sick per- 
son " to make a special confession of his sins, if he feels his conscience troubled 
with any weighty matter. After which confession, the priest shall absolve hiiu 
(if he humbly aud heartily desire it) after this sort. Our Lord Jems Christ, 
toko hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners, who truly repent and believe 
in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences ; and by his authority com- 
mitted to ME, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the FatJier, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." 

" Private confession unto a priest is of very ancient practice in the Church, of 
excellent use and benefit ; being discreetly handled. We refuse it to none, if men 
require it, if need be to have it: we urge and persuade it in extremis: we require 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GEXERAL. 39 O 

tion, steril in point of practice, and of no use in the ordinary 
course of life. The utility of confession suffices not therefore 
to conduct sinners to it. 

it in the case of perplexitie for the quieting of men disturbed, and their con- 
sciences." * 

Bishop Andrews, his contemporary, has gone still farther and acknowledged 
the necessity of confession. In his Court Sermon, on St. John XX. v. 23. Whose 
sins you shall forgive they are forgiven, he argues as follows : f " We are not, the 
ordinance of God thus standing, to rend oft' one part of the the sentence : Three 
are here expressed, three persons: 1. the person of the sinner, in whose: 2. of 
God, in are forgiven : 3. of the priest, in you shall forgive. Three are expressed; 
and where three are expressed, three are required ; and where three are required, 
two are not enough." It is clear, from this simple and just reasoning that con- 
fession made to God alone cannot suilice since the institution by Jesus Christ. 
'• It is St. Augustin that thus speaketh of this ecclesiastical act in his time" con- 
tinues bishop Andrews : and he then quotes a passage which I shall produce 
litter; and then makes the following just observation. "God ordinarily pro- 
ceedeth, in remitting sin, by the Church's act. And hence they have their part 
in this work, and cannot be excluded ; no more in this than in other acts and parts 
of their function. And to exclude them is (after a sort) to wring the keys out 
of their hands, to whom Christ hath given them, is to cancel and make void this 
clause of You shall forgive, as if it were no part of the sentence; to account 
of all this solemn sending, and inspiring, as if it were an idle and fruitless cere- 
mony." Why has not this been the constant language made use of in your 
Church ? In the above passage is shewn the truth and the energy of plain and 
simple argumentation. How is it possible after this, for any one to refuse to 
yield, in a matter 60 essential, and so decisive of our eternal salvation ? 

Perhaps you would wish to hear what Luther has to say upon the subject. 
II. admits that confession is of admirable utility: and desires that it should be 
continued as it was used in his time. " Man," says he, " ought to confess to God 
ail his faults, even those that he knows not of; and to his director those only that 
he knows and feels in his conscience." Have we ever required more? In fact, 
is it possible i" require more? If he was to conclude by teaching what the 
Ghuroh teaches, why did he make so tumultuous a disturbance in the world, to 
cam mankind to understand that confession to God alone was sufficient; that if 
i!, ■. addressed th suiselvea to bis minister, which was indeed useful, it sulliced to 
acknowledge th ins elves guilt\ in general terms, without declaring in what, or to 
what extent; that the enumeration of their offences was only of ecclesiastical 
ordinance, 4c? 

Calvin makes no difficulty in admitting the advantages of confession: but ac- 
knowledging its utility, he denies its necessity. Sometimes he discovers its 
origin about the end of Decius and its termination under Nectarius; at other 
be Bays that it was unknown during the six oral ages, and was introduced 

* Dr. Montague, bishop of Cheaper. Appeal, Ch. XXXfl. || Sermon preached at 
the Court of King James I. 



390 ON THE CHURCn OF ENGLAND 

I know, it sometimes happens amongst you, that a sick man, 
oppressed by the remorse of certain grievous transgressions, de- 
sires, or consents at least to see an ecclesiastic : he is induced 
to repose in his bosom the weight with which he is oppressed i 
the minister receives this sorrowful deposit, replies with words 
of kindness, gives him absolution, unites his prayers with those 
of his penitent, and takes, as you express it, the sacrament with 
him The unfortunate man enjoys some little calm and repose ; 
he sleeps till death in an illusion, which is to disappear at the 
tribunal of God. For has he made a sufficient confession of his 
faults ? After a life of essential omissions and multiplied dis- 
orders, has he had the thought to accuse himself entirely of them, 
at least to the best of his power ? He is satisfied with revealing 
some enormities, with which his conscience was terribly tormen- 
ted. He goes therefore to present himself before God with all 
those stains, which his imperfect confession and a null absolution 
could not remove ; for you, who require that every thing should 
be seen in scripture, where do you find in scripture that a half 
confession and absolution are sufficient ? Does not one single 
mortal crime, or an attachment to one single vicious habit, de- 
stroy us without resource? Can a man be reconciled to God in 
one part of his conscience, and not in another? Can grace and 
sin be found together in the same soul ? Do we not read that 
nothing defiled can enter heaven, and that the violation of one 
single precept is sufficient to exclude us from it? Or, has Jesus 
Christ said, that the absolution of the greatest crimes shall draw 
after it that of the lesser, but yet grievous faults ? No, Sir, it is 
not so: it is no where wrrtten so, but it is written, that he has 
given to his ministers the power of forgiving or retaining all sins ; 
and as they cannot reasonably exercise either of these powers, 

by the council of Lateran. Sometimes in the furious transports of his blind 
zeal, ho forgets what he has said in its favor, and declaims against it as a tyranny, 
an abomination, a pest, a torture invented by pope Innocent III. 

' What works of mercy are the works of the Gospel! What reparations and 
restitutions does not confession cause to be made among Catholics! Among all, 
what effect has the approach of the period for eo.nmunion in producing rtcdn- 
eiliations and alms-deeds." Rousseau, Emile, torn. III. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 3 l J7 

without knowing the sins in their full extent, it is necessary, as 
far as can be done, that all the sins should be declared to them ; 
and of course, absolution is null, when a deliberately partial con- 
fession has been made. 

It is written again, "If we confess our sins, Jesus Christ is 
faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from ail 
iniquity.'" That the confession here spoken of by St. John re- 
fers to that, which is made to a priest, and not to God alone : that 
it extends to every sin committed, and not merely to a few, there 
needs but a trifling attention to prove : for 1st, the apostle speaks 
of a confession, which suffices for the remission of sins. If the 
confession made to God alone were sufficient, Jesus Christ would 
have given to his ministers the power of absolving to no purpose, 
because the first means being more easy, and of as certain an 
elleot, it is clear that sinners would be perfectly satisfied with it; 
therefore our Saviour would not have spoken the truth, when he 
promised to his substitutes, that whatever they should bind upon 
earth should be bound also in heaven ; because in spite of all 
their bonds, sinners would become free and unshackled, by turn- 
ing themselves directly to God. It will follow by consequence, 
that St. John here understands confession, such as, from its es- 
tablish inent after the resurrection, it has always been practised in 
the Church. And this also he insinuates by reminding us that 
Jesus Christ will be faithful to his promise of forgiving us our 
sins. For we see clearly that by investing his ministers with the 
power of binding and loosing, he attaches to this power the pro- 
mise of pardon ; but we no where read that he has attached it 
to confession made only to God. 

2d. The confession of which the apostle here speaks, must not 
be confined to certain faults, but extended to them all. Indeed, 
according to his doctrine, Jesus Christ, being faithful and just, 
will forgive us the sins we shall confess. Remark that the con- 
fession of our sins is a condition, to which he has attached our 
pardon, "if we confess our sins." Now, on this condition Says 
St. John, Jesus Christ will forgive 09 our sins; he speaks gene- 

' St. .John, 1 Bp. 1, 9. 
34 



398 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

rally, and makes no exceptions. There ought therefore to be no 
exception made iu the confession, that we are bound of necessity 
to make ; and in order that there may remain no doubt as to the 
universality of the pardon, he adds that he will "cleanse us from 
all iniquity." This supposes that the condition is fulfilled on our 
part by the complete confession of all our sins. In a word, ac- 
cording to St. John, the confession of sins must precede the re- 
mission ; all the sins are forgiven ; therefore, all the sins must 
have been confessed. 

Let me conjure you to form true and exact notions respecting 
this dogma: error on this point would be highly dangerous, since 
your salvation is at stake. The utility alone of confession would 
but ill correspond with the views of our Saviour, who would have 
given to his vicars nothing but an empty title, and a phantom of 
authority, in giving them the power to absolve, if he had not, 
by so doing, obliged sinners to subject themselves to it. Utility 
alone would not be sufficient to make them have recourse to it, 
in preference to a more convenient means, since in your Church, 
where this utility is recognized, no one in health ever thinks of 
taking advantage of it, because he does not consider it as obli- 
gatory ; and if any think proper to make use of it in their last 
illness, to which circumstance confession seems with you to be 
confined, they have recourse to it after a manner so incomplete 
and erroneous, that it must be regarded as null. To reason con- 
sequently, let us say that every man, by losing his baptismal 
innocence, becomes subjected to the jurisdiction with which Jesus 
Christ has invested his ministers ; that he is necessarily amenable 
to their tribunal for all the evil he has committed ; and that in 
order to obtain the pardon of his faults, it is no longer sufficient 
for him to lament them in himself, and before God ; he must, 
also when it can be done, humble himself so far as to confess 
them without disguise, and to the best of his power, in order to 
receive the benefit of sacerdotal absolution. Such is most cer- 
tainly the order established by our divine legislator ; such is his 
will, and if it is not traced in express terms in scripture, it is 
there found very sufficiently marked out. The necessity of con- 



: 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 399 

fession springs from its very institution, and both are as intimately 
connected with the words of our Saviour as effect is with its cause. 
The enemies of sacramental confession have omitted nothing 
to destroy every vestige of it in primitive tradition. They used 
violence to the monuments of antiquity ; they have brought them 
together, less, it would seem, with a view to elicit truth, than to 
envelope it in darkness. When, in the first ages, they meet with 
the word confession, they stiffly maintain that it refers to the 
confession, which was made to Grod alone, or partially to the 
apostles and their disciples. When they discover it in the more 
numerous monuments of the third and fourth ages, they contend 
that it merely refers to a public confession, which, they say, al- 
ways forming a part of solemn penance, ought necessarily to be 
referred to it, and could only have originated with it : that this 
public penance being nothing but a regulation of Church disci- 
pline, the confession which accompanied it was a part of the same 
regulation ; that consequently it could not without error be at- 
tributed to Jesus Christ, because public penance comes not un- 
doubtedly from him. And because after the abrogation of public 
confession, at the end of the fourth century, in the Greek Church- 
es, and later in the Latin Churches, they observe private cou- 
fession to be in vigor, they have concluded from this that it 
received its origin from the former, and had supplanted it, and 
that without overturning the rules of sound reason, there could 
not be given to the daughter a date anterior to the existence of 
the mother ; and consequently, that it could not be traced back 
to the apostolic age. 

Now you shall soon see, that the conjectures of these divines, 
and their learned researches have terminated in inverting the 
natural and legitimate order in this genealogy of the two confes- 
sions; that according to the principles of ( nnon sense, which 

they extol, they ought to have honestly acknowledged that public 
confession sprung from private confession, and that we cannot 
BOppose the former to have had any other extraction-, without at 
tin' same time rejecting what reason teaches, and positive au- 
thorities demonstrate. The following considerations, by casting 



400 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

BOme light on a subject, on which confusion has not been thrown 
without design, will, I flatter myself, suifice to convince you of 
these two points, first, that without the divine institution of sac- 
ramental confession, the establishment of public confession would 
have been impracticable in the Church ; in the second place, that 
public confession, such as it was practised, could not be conceived 
but on the supposition that it was preceded by private confession. 
I shall prove, after this, the justices of this second assertion, by 
positive and peremptory authorities ; and then it will be no longer 
possible to doubt that, in point of right and fact, private and en- 
tire confession invariably preceded that confession, which was 
made partially in public. 

1. I maintain that, without the divine institution of sacra- 
mental confession, the establishment of public confession would 
have been absolutely impracticable in the Church. Call to mind 
here, Sir, that extreme repugnance which you have so often tes- 
tified to confession, such as for many ages has been going on 
between the priest and the penitent. We have seen that this 
repugnance has existed at all times and in all men, because it 
has its root in that self-love, which is born with us, and is inherent 
in our nature ; that consequently no human power could ever 
have succeeded in subduing it. And how then, I ask, should it 
have triumphed over it, by given it new strength, and pushing 
it to the last extremity ? For here the question is, not to go and 
declare in secrecy our faults to one single minister of Jesus 
Christ, bound by every law, natural, divine, and human, and 
under pain of the severest punishments, to keep an inviolable 
secrecy; but before all the faithful indiscriminately, before our 
friends and acquaintance, before our domestics, our children, 
straugers and enemies. The very idea of this is most repugnant 
to our feelings. What man, in compliance with a mere point of 
discipline, would ever have consented to go through so revolting 
a humiliation, if he had thought that Jesus Christ required of 
him no more than to confess his sins to God alone. There is no 
one who does not feel most decidedly in himself, that all the 
powers of the world put together would never have been able to 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 401 

force the people to it ; much less would they have attempted to 
have subjected themselves to it. 

Will your divines reply, that this confession of the ancient 
times extended not to every fault, that it was confined to public 
offences, and that it is less painful to self love to acknowledge in 
public what is unknown to no one, than to declare to a single 
individual what is not known by him ? 

It seems, it is true, that thus the most sensible part of the 
confusion and shame is taken away from public confession, when 
once it is limited to crimes publicly committed. Yet however 
there would still remain sufficient to terrify human nature, and 
should they have a right, which they have not, to confine this 
confession to public transgressions, they would not explain any 
better the qualities and the characters, which I discover belonging 
to it in antiquity, and which it is impossible not to perceive. For 
observe, that if, in the ordinary course of civil society, a person 
has the misfortune publicly to commit a serious crime, and an 
injurious, cruel, or infamous action, he never wants excuses for 
its extenuation. It was done by a sudden impulse, over which 
he had no control; he was not master of himself; he knew not 
where he was, or what he said, or what he did ; it was done more 
through levity, that any intention to injure, and he did not fore- 
see the fatal consequences ; or else, he had been outrageously 
provoked, or hurried on by drunkenness or passion. But in the 
ancient penance, at the entrance of a Church, in the habit of 
mourning, with the head shaved, no palliations, excuses, or pre- 
texts were heard. The sinner sincerely deposed against himself, 
was his own accuser, exposed to lig .t his own baseness and per- 
versity, acknowledged that he did it with full deliberation, and 
displayed to men the full deformity of his conduct, and the tears 
and lamentation, which accompanied the manifestation of his 
crimes, manifested his sincere repentance 1 can conceive the 
erarageouB resignation of these penitents in thus drinking all the 
bitterness of the chalice, if they were persuaded that Jesus Christ 
presented it to them by the hands of his ministers. I can con- 
ceive their peaceful resignation, if they imagine they are sub- 
34 



402 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

mitting to a person invested with divine authority, if in the order, 
which they have received, they have heard the sente'nce of G-od 
himself; if they are convinced that they must comply with it on 
earth, in order to be pardoned in heaven. Without this, I know 
not how to account for it, and this public confession, even of 
notorious crimes alone, presents to me nothing but a phenomenon 
contrary to every moral law, and to the constitution of the human 
heart. 

Do not deceive yourself, Sir; we must proceed a step further ; 
for it is most positively false that this confession was confined to 
public crimes alone, since the most secret faults were often there 
severely condemned. "We learn from Irenaeus, 1 that many women 
had, for a long time, been seduced by the artifices and the dis- 
course of the heretic Marcus ; but that, returning to the Church, 
they had confessed that this hypocrite after having cast them, by 
means of his potions and charms, into a bewildered state, in which 
they had no power over themselves, had shamefully abused their 
persons. The wife of a deacon, as this same father relates, 2 had 
deserted her husband to follow this magician ; she had shared the 
fate of the other victims ; at last opening her eyes to the indignity 
of her conduct, she spent the remainder of her days in public 
penance, bewailing the disgrace which this seducer had brought 
upon her. These faults were secret, and yet were publicly con- 
fessed, since they came to the knowledge of the historian who 
relates them. The same author 3 tells us again, that Cerdo passed 
his life in leaving the Church, and returning to it, in secretly 
spreading the poison of his doctrine, and in publicly accusing 
himself of the same. Eusebius 4 relates that of the three calum- 
niators, who had blackened the reputation of Narcissus, bishop of 
Jerusalem, two having made an unhappy end, the third fearing 
the like fate, submitted to make a public manifestation of the odius 
conspiracy that he had plotted with his two accomplices, and to 
undergo a long and severe course of penance. He says, more- 
over, that some confessors of the faith, deceived by the austere 
doctrine of the relentless and audacious Novatus, but having 
' L. I. c. IX. 'Ibid. 3 III. c. iv. 4 L . yi. c. IX. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 403 

afterwards acknowledged their errors, divulged in the Church 
their own wickedness and that of Novatus. 

Does not Tertullian rise up, with the vigor of his character and 
the energy of his style, against those timid and falsely delicate 
souls, which had not the courage to manifest their faults and lay 
open the folds of their conscience, and which, delighting to es- 
cape from men, as if they could escape Grod, perished eternally 
with their foolish shame, like to those sick persons, who, being 
attacked in their secret members, and not being able to resolve 
upon exposing them to the eye of the physician, sunk for want 
of assistance, under the evil which they obstinately concealed? 
Our adversaries, for fear of discovering sacramental confession 
so high in antiquity, will have it that Tertullian here points out 
confession before all the Church. Be it so. What will they 
gain by it ? For is it not evident that in that case Tertullian 
included secret faults ? It is then true that they were, sometimes 
at least, to be publicly divulged. This I could prove to you by 
still other authorities ; but I suppress them, lest too long an 
interruption should make us loose the thread of our argument. 
Let me then intreat you to lay it down as a certain foundation 
that public confession was not confined to notorious crimes alone, 
and that oftentimes the most unknown and secret crimes were not 
exempt from it. Thus our first arguments resume their full force, 
anl without repeating them here, we are authorized to consider 
it as morally impossible that a purely human power should, of 
its own authority, independently of heaven, have established 
among Christians this kind of public confession, whether for no- 
torious crimes or secret sins. But, the divine institution of sac- 
ramental confession once admitted, the necessity of recurring to 
the ministers of Christ for obtaining the pardon of sins being 
once ackn iwledged, the whole question takes a different appear- 
ance ; it is no longer man that we obey, when by his order we 
make this public declaration of our guilt; it is Jesus Cbrist him- 
self, whose mandate is communicated to us by the organ of his 
minister : and this explains every thing. Is it, in fact, any thing 
too painful, when we are persuaded that it is God who command? 



404 ON THE CHURCH OF BNGLANB 

it? any thing too humiliating, when we seek to disarm his justice 
and move his clemency? I admire the ancient penitents, bu' ;mi 
no longer surprised at their submission and sincerity. I see wii t 
occasioned their obedience, their tears and lamentations and long 
continued trials. This world had nothing to do with it : it w is 
all done with reference to him who dispenses life and death as he 
pleases, and who cannot be deceived, because he reads the 
thoughts and the heart of man. You see now, Sir, that confes- 
sion, such as it was practised in public, is naturally accounted 
for, under the influence of sacramental confession, whereas with- 
out this latter, it remains as unaccountable as it would have been 
impracticable in all ages. 

2. Passing to my second assertion, I entreat you to catch my 
meaning correctly. I said that even secret faults were not ex- 
empt from public confession, but by no means insinuated that they 
were always subjected to it. Sometimes they were as I have 
proved ; sometimes they were not, as every one will allow. Now 
what is the meaning of this diversity of expiations in secret sins, 
and of this disparity of treatment to which they are subjected ? 
It teaches us, if we consider it rightly, that public confession 
could proceed only from private confession, as you shall now see. 
It is a fact that, according to times and persons, the most secret 
faults were sometimes obliged to be divulged and sometimes not 
so : that oftentimes, being treated as notorious crimes, a mani- 
festation of them was required, and that more frequently they 
were left buried in the consciences of the penitents and the con- 
fidence of the confessor. In all secret faults therefore, there 
was a choice and discernment to be made between those which 
were to be publicly confessed, and those which were to be kept 
in secrecy. Now whose part was it to make thi3 choice and se- 
lection ? It must have been done either by the minister of Jesus 
Christ in the tribunal of private confession, or out of the tribunal 
by the criminal himself, according to his own discretion and the 
degree of his repentance. It must have been done by one or 
other of these ways : no medium can be discovered. To whom 
then. I ask, are we to attribute the making of this selection and 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 405 

choice ? If you leave it at the disposal of the sinner, it must be 
said, that by a disciplinary enactment, penitents were bound to 
go of themselves and make a public proclamation, both of their 
notorious crimes, and also of certain secret sins ; that with re- 
gard to the latter, it was left to their judgment to decide, according 
to their own lights, what sins they should, or should not reveal 
in public. But, admitting, what to me appears an impossibility, 
that their fervor could have subdued their repugnance, and that 
the Christians of those times would have consented to conform 
to I discipline purely ecclesiastical ; who does not see at first sight 
the numberless abuses unavoidably arising from it ? How many 
indiscretions would have been committed through the simplicity 
of some, the blind zeal of others, through the fear of saying too 
little, and above all through defect of judgment so common in 
mankind, and a confusion of ideas which prevails in most of us ! 
Some would pass over in silence what ought to have been made 
manifest; others would reveal what should have been kept con- 
cealed. What enmities and animosities would result from such 
indiscretions ! How many persons' characters would be exposed ! 
"What jealousies awakened! How many suspicions in society, 
troubles in families, and scandals in the Church! These would 
be without number, and beyond imagination great. No, Sir, a 
discipline so foolish and extravagant would never have held eight 
days together ; and yet there are those, who would palm the 
honor of it upon sage and venerable antiquity! It cannot be 
supposed for an instant ; and I should be ashamed even to make 
it the subject of an argument. 

We are compelled therefore to admit, that the choice and se- 
lection, of which we speak, appertained to the dispensers of the 
mysteries, which evidently supposes that the penitents began by 
depositing all their faults in the bosom of the bishop or priest, 
that he gave hie judgment upon them; and that this sacramental 
confession preceded every public confession, and it alone deter- 
mine! when the public confession was to be made. Upon this 
plan all abuses disappear. If a sinner was desirous of recovering 
the favor of Grod, he addressed himself to the bishop or priest, 



406 ON THE CIIURCH OF ENGLAND 

and made an humble and sincere confession of all his sins ; the 
director, after having heard his confession, weighed in his mind 
the advice he was to give, and the conduct he was to prescribe. 
The principles he had unceasingly before his eyes could tend to 
nothing else than to the reparation of the injuries done to man, 
or to religion, the utility or advancement of the penitent in vir- 
tue, the safety of his person, the care of his and his neighbor's 
reputation, and the general edification. If among these sins, 
there were some weighty and notorious crimes, these were ordered 
to be confessed publicly for the reparation of the scandal given. 
If in the secret sins, there were found some, the publication of 
which would turn to the advantage of all, or of an individual, 
without hurting a third person, this publication was prescribed: 
thus the calumniator, who survived his two accomplices, was con- 
demned to make public the falsities, with which he had blackened 
the reputation of Narcissus the bishop; 'and the women, seduced 
by Marcus, were compelled to reveal their own turpitude, in or- 
der to unmask that hypocrite, and arrest the progress of his her- 
esy, and of his shameful practices. Had the director to heal a 
proud and haughty spirit, after having in vain tried milder reme- 
dies, he would at length have reduced it to the humiliating mor- 
tification of a public accusation, in order by this means to subdue 
that pride which till then could not be brought under. But if 
the safety or reputation of individuals was found to be compro- 
mised by an open confession, a prudent ecclesiastic would have 
been most careful not to command it, and the Church itself had 
forbidden it : thus the man guilty of theft or murder, although 
subjected to a long and severe course of penance, could not be 
subjected to a public accusation, which would have exposed him 
to the animadversion of the civil laws ; in the same manner, a 
woman guilty of adultery, which the laws punished with death, 
was indeed placed amongst the penitents, but in one of those 
degrees, which served rather to conceal than cause suspicion of 
her crime. 1 Thus the Church knew well how to reconcile the 

1 Our fathers have forbidden us publicly to disgrace " worn -n guilty of adul- 
tery, whether it be that they have piously mentioned it in confession, or that they 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 407 

interests of heaven with those of the earth, the honor and the 
safety of individuals with their advancement in virtue, the se- 
verity of principles with indulgence for the individuals. Thus 
she knew well how to repair scandal without ever occasioning it, 
to turn the confusion of sinners to the good of their souls, and 
to draw from evil itself a subject of edification for all her children. 
Under this beautiful and admirable discipline, every thing pro- 
ceeded with decency, order and justice. Sacramental confession, 
instituted by Christ, always goes first; public confession, estab- 
lished by the Church, sometimes follows, but never precedes; 
the one always indispensable regulates the other, which is but 
auxiliary. The former, of divine creation, has subsisted and will 
subsist in all times ; the latter, of ecclesiastical origin, after having 
obtained for some ages, has been discontinued by the same ca- 
nonical authority, by which it had been instituted. 

Such are the notions that we must form of public confession, 
if we would not attribute to the primitive Church a discipline 
unworthy of it. Good sense suggests them, as much as it for- 
bids the incorrect notions of our adversaries. Perhaps they may 
be disposed to contradict this theory : let them however for a mo- 
ment suspend their attack : there are no reasons so plausible, I 
am aware, as to be entirely sheltered from exception; but it is 
in vain to cavil ; they must surrender to facts, which are of their 
own nature irrevocably inflexible. 

3. "We will proceed therefore to authorities, and in support 
of our argumentation we will shew, by positive and cotemporary 
testimonies, that sacramental confession did actually precede 
public confession. It would be unreasonable to require that all 
tli'' Fathers, who have exhorted sinners to undergo the shame 
of this publicity, should have recommended secret confession as 
a necessary preclude. What need is there of mentioning a cus- 
tom, when it ib established, known, and universally followed in 

have been del •<■( "I by other means, for fear of occasioning their death by the 
fin-, iction of their crime : they have ordained that such women should be kept 
among the continents, ami Bhonld not communicate till they have completed the 
time of their penance." St. Basil II. Ep. Canon, to Amphiloehius. Can. XXXIV. 



408 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

practice ? In such circumstances the thing speaks for itself, and 
follows of course. For this reason, supposing that, according 
to the doctrine of the Church, sacramental confession was to pre- 
cede, and that, according to invariable custom, it actually did 
precede the other, it is very plain that the Fathers, when urging 
sinners to that which was extraordinary and more painful, would 
not have spoken of the other, which was much less so, and to 
which no one generally speaking refused to submit. But what 
would be indeed most strange and inconceivable, would be that, 
private confession not being known or customary, some Fathers 
should have testified that it was known and customary, that it 
always had been so, must be so, and must serve as a guide for 
public confession . Yet this is what some of the most celebrated 
Fathers have done, as you shall now see. " Observe what the 
divine Scripture teaches, that we must not inwardly conceal our 
sins. For, as those whose stomach is overloaded with indigesti- 
ble food, and humors, if they vomit, are instantly relieved; so 
they, who have sinned, if they hide and retain their sins (are 
not these secret crimes ?) within their breast, are grievously tor- 
mented : but if the sinner becomes his own accuser, while he 
does this, he discharges the cause of all his malady. Only let 
him carefully consider, to whom he should confess his sin ; what 
is the character of the physician ; if he be one who will be weak 
with the weak, who will weep with the sorrowful, and who un- 
derstands the discipline of condolence and fellow-feeling." 1 Here 
let us make a pause : we cannot but discover here the private 
confession of all, even the most secret sins : Origen describes it 
exactly and minutely. He does not mention it as a remedy of 
his own invention, which he would have made use of, if the cus- 
tom had till then been unknown. On the contrary, what he 
says supposes the practice of it to have been general among the 
faithful and the priests ; among the faithful, because he recom- 
mends to them the choice of a proper director, and indirectly 
blames those, who go to the first that offers ; among the priests, 
because he marks out in them a diversity of capacity and talents, 
1 Origen Homil. II. in Psal. XXXVII. T. II. p. C8S. Edit. Bened. Paris, l~X',. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 409 

and upon this diversity grounds the circumspection that ought to 
be used in making a choice. Where preferences take place, 
there necessarily must be many to choose from. Thus all the 
priests, or the greater part, heard confessions, some better than 
others. He wishes the penitents to inform themselves exactly 
of these latter, and apply, to the most capable. The faithful 
were therefore accustomed to confess their sins in private, and 
the priest to receive their confession. 

That these private confessions, preceded public confessions, 
the words immediately following the foregoing passage shall in- 
form you. " So that," continues Origen, " when his skill shall 
be known, and his pity felt you may follow what he should ad- 
vise. Should he think your disease to be such, that it should be 
declared in the assembly of the faithful, whereby others may be 
edified, and yourself easily reformed ; this must be done with 
much deliberation and the skilful advice of the physician." Let 
us say therefore that the penitent discovers first of all the state 
of his soul to his director, and that the remedy is in the hand 
and at the disposal of the latter. He probes and examines the 
woand, if he judges that the nature of the disorder requires 
publicity, he commands it. Therefore, confession made to the 
priest here precedes that, which it might be proper to make in 
public ; and in the first it is determined whether the second shall 
take place. Observe that there is no question here of any 
canonical or notorious crime, but the question is of a secret 
mahidy of the soul, of an internal languor which escapes every 
eye, and which only comes to the knowledge of the du-ector, by 
the confidential communication of the penitent in private. There- 
fore, the most secret fmlts were not sometimes less liable to be 
divulged. What information is contained in these few words of 
Origen! The public confession of secret faults; public confes- 
sion preceded and regulated by sacramental confession; the 
established custom among the faithful of confessing in private, 
and among the priests of receiving the confessions: all these 
points aiv comprised in this valuable passage of the third cen- 
35 



410 ON THE CHURCH OF EXGLAXT) 

tury ; and to find them there, it will be sufficient to read the 
passage attentively. 

Let it not be said that Origen does not extend confession to 
every fault, and that he confines it to one sin more oppressive 
than the others. The first part of the passage is directly con- 
trary to this supposition ; and in order that not a shadow of doubt 
may remain respecting his doctrine, join to what you have just 
read, these words, which are also his : " If we discover our sivs, 
not only to God, but to those also who may apply a remedy to 
our wounds and iniquities, our sins will be effaced by Him who 
said: I have blotted out thy iniquities as a cloud, and thy sins 
as a mist. Isaias, c. xliv. v. 22. "' This learned man, there- 
fore, subjected all sins to confession, and declared that on this 
condition God pardoned them by the instrumentality of his 
minister. 

The stern and unrelenting Novatus became indignant, when 
he saw that they were admitted to communion, who having fal- 
len in the persecution of Decius, seven or eight months before, 
had afterwards shewn sincere repentance. He insisted that crimes 
so enormous could not be absolved upon earth, and that they 
must be left to the mercy of God. The Church, alarmed at his 
errors and his schism, thought it necessary, in order to put an 
end to them, or at least to check their progress, to augment the 
severity of her discipline : she assigned four degrees to the ca- 
nonical course of penance, and prolonged the duration of each de- 
gree. Moreover, " The bishops of the Churches added to the 
Canon, that in each Church a priest should preside over the ad- 
ministration of penance, and that all those who fell after baptism, 
should deposit with him the confession of their sins." 2 " They 
chose for penitentiary," says another historian, " a priest of ex- 
cellent reputation, known for his prudence, and fidelity in keep- 
ing secrets." 3 What does this mean? And how comes it that 
this last quality is required, if they were only bound to confess 
to him their public crimes? Secret sins, therefore, were equally 

'Horn. XVII. on St. Luke. 2 Socrates, Hist. B. V. C. XIX. 3 Sozomen, B 
VII. C. XIV. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 411 

to be declared to him. And as one only priest would not have 
been sufficient, in a large town or capital city, to hear all the 
sinners, his ministry was necessarily confined to those, who hav- 
ing committed faults liable to canonical penance, were obliged to 
address themselves to him, or be sent to him by the priests, 
whose jurisdiction did not extend so far. Such was the peniten- 
tiary instituted about the year 251. Now it happened, about 
150 years afterwards, at Constantinople, "that a lady of quality 
came to confess in full detail all the sins, which she had commit- 
fcfl 1 from the time of her baptism. The penitentiary prescribed 
to her fasts and continual prayers, which, joined to a (public) 
confession of some sins, would manifest in her worthy fruits of 
repentance. But this lady going beyond the bounds prescribed, 
publicly accused herself of another fault, declaring that she had 
sinned with a deacon. The crime, thus becoming public, gave 
much scandal, and caused many reports and much ill-feeling to- 
wards the clergy ; the deacon was dismissed, and the archbishop 
was induced to abolish the office of penitentiary together with 
the custom of public accusation." 1 

Although the two historians who relate this fact, have not 
drawn up their narrative with all the precision and method to be 
desired, they have still cleared up two important points: 1. the 
necessity and the practice of the private confession of every sin ; 
for S'izomen begins by these words: "As it is absolutely neces- 
sary to confess our sins, if we would obtain the pardon of them." 
And in accordance with it, Socrates relates that " this lady con- 
1' Bsed all ili'' -ins which she had committed from the time of her 
baptism." 2. They also shew us that confession made in private 
to a priest preceded the confession that was made in public. In 
feet we discover from their recital, that this lady leaves the pen- 
it. ■uti.iry to go, by his order, and accuse herself publicly of some 
of ber faults; but that, hurried on by an indiscreet zeal, she 
discloses what should have been concealed. Once more then it 
n proved that private eonfession always preceded a public mani- 
festation of guilt. 

■ Socrates, Jli^i. B. v. cb. \l\. 



412 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Calvin foolishly triumphs on occasion of this anecdote, and 
would have it to be understood that the above refers to nothing 
else but the establishment and abrogation of auricular confes- 
sion. His object is to make us conclude with him that originat- 
ing towards the conclusion of the reign of Decius, it was, after 
* century and a half of existence, entirely abolished at Constan- 
tinople under Nectarius. These however are but the fictions 
of a prejudiced and heated imagination. Calvin might, had he 
been so disposed, have discovered the existence of confession 
long before Decius : he might have discovered it in Origen, who 
was born in 185, and even in St. Basil, where he says: Our 
fathers "(which, in his time, would reach further back than the 
third century) have forbidden the making public the adulteries 
of women, known by confession." He might have seen that 
Nectarius abrogated that which had occasioned scandal and might 
again occasion it, but that auricular confession, made to a peni- 
tentiary chosen for his discretion, could not have occasioned the 
scandal, and never would be productive of auy. He might, in 
fine, have seen that St. Chrysostom,' the immediate successor 
of Nectarius, oftentimes assures the penitents that they are no 
longer obliged to appear as on a theatre and publicly lay open 
their conscience, and yet that he urges upon them the use and 
the necessity of private confession. It is melancholy to have 
still to refute such miserable cavils ; I should have passed them 
by in silence, had the professors of protestantism let them drop, 
as, one would imagine, they should be induced to do from good 
faith and a love of truth. 

St. Basil 2 puts a question ; whether it is necessary to declare 
our bad actions to the world, or merely to some particular per- 
sons, and who those persons are ; and thus replies. ' ' In the 
confession of sins, the same method must be observed as in lay- 
ing open the infirmities of the body. For as these are not rashly 
communicated to every one, but to those only who understand 
by what method they may be cured ; so the confession of sins 

' Horn, on the Samaritan woman. Horn. XX. on Genesis. 2 In Quest. Brev. 
Beg. 229. T. II. p. 492, Edit. Bened. Paris. 1721. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 413 

must be made to such persons as know how to apply a remedy." 
Is not this equivalent to saying that sinners ought not to go of 
their own accord to manifest their faults in public, but that they 
should first address themselves to those whom Jesus Christ has 
appointed the spiritual physicians of the soul? Of this, the 
comparison admits no doubt. For, says the holy Father, we 
must act in the maladies of the soul, as we do in those of the 
body, discovering them only to those who can remove them. 
Now a public assembly most assuredly cannot heal a spiritual 
malady: it is not to such an assembly therefore that we must in 
the first place make it known : and if ever we do thus manifest it, 
it must only be done secondarily and according to the direction 
of our spiritual physician. And to the end that you may be 
perfectly assured that by spiritual physicians, he means priests 
only, read what he has written in another canon: 1 " Our sins 
must of necessity be confessed to those, to whom has been com- 
mitted the dispensation of the mysteries of God." 

St. Augustin, speaking of the sinner in general, addresses to 
him the following instructions: 2 "When the sinner shall have 
passed a severe but medicinal judgment on himself, let him come 
to the priests, by whom the keys are ministered. Beginning 
now to be an obedient son, by observing the commands of his 
inuther, he may receive from the ministry of the sacraments the 
due measure of satisfaction ; so that offering up, with devotion 
and supplication, the sacrifice of a contrite heart, he will not 
only promote his own salvation, but benefit others by his exam- 
ple. Should this crime be of such a nature, as to cause scandal 
to others, as well as to be grievous to himself, and the minister 
judge it to be expedient for the good of the Church, that he 
.should do penance in the presence of many, or of the whole as- 
sembly, let him not refuse ; let him not resist, and thus, through 
shame, aggravate a distemper already mortal." You have here 
iu a few words the whole system of the penitential discipline. 
Xhe sinner commences by going to the priest; he observes his 
eommanda and receives from him tin: due measure of satisfaction 

' [bid. Beg. 288. p. Hft »Ham. L. T. X. p, 178, I'.uU, 1014. 
35 



414 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

which the minister thinks proper to impose : the sinner is not to 
refuse to submit, even if he be required, by way of reparation 
of scandal given, to make a public manifestation of his crime. 
Therefore, even scandalous and notorious offences were not pub- 
licly divulged, unless the director thought it advisable : and the 
confession which was made in private preceded that which was 
made in public, and this second confession was regulated and de- 
termined by the first, which Tertullian 1 bad a long time before 
called the counsellor of satisfaction. 

St. Leo 2 expressly prohibited the practice which certain bishops 
or ecclesiastics had presumed to introduce, contrary to the apot* 
tolical regulation, of obliging penitents to write out at full length 
the particular kind of sins they had committed, and read thera 
in public. Having lately understood, that some of you, by an 
unlawful usurpation, have adopted a practice which tradition 
does not allow, I am determined by all means to suppress it. I 
speak of penance, when applied for by the faithful. There shall 
be no declaration of all kinds of sins, given in writing, and pub- 
licly read: for it is enough that the guilt of conscience be made 
known to the priests alone by a private confession. That confi- 
dence, indeed, may be thought deserving of praise, which, ou 
the account of the fear of Grod, hesitates not to blush before 
men ; but there are sins, the public disclosure of which must ex- 
cite fear; therefore, let this improper practice be put an end to, 
lest many be kept from the remedies of penance, being ashamed, 
or dreading, to make known to their enemies such actions, as 
may expose them to legal punishment. That confession suffices, 
which is first made to God, and then to the minister, who will 
offer up prayers for the sins of penitents. And then will more 
be induced to apply to this remedy, when the secrets of the con- 
fessing sinner shall not be divulged in the hearing of the people."' 

What is it that the sovereign pontiff here blames and prohibits ? 
It could not be the blind zeal or indiscreet conduct of certain 
penitents, who of their own accord, had made a public manifes- 
tation of their sins : for this voluntary and inordinate zeal of 

' IV. C. IX. De Pen*. -'Ep. LXXXIII. al. XCI. p. 035, fi96. Pari,. 1G75. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 415 

some would not have prevented others from confessing their sins 
in secret. It was therefore the conduct of certain ecclesiastics, 
who, contrary to apostolical tradition, presumptuously took upon 
themselves to induce their penitents to give their sins a publicity 
till then unheard of. If these ecclesiastics had made a prudent 
distinction between the sins to be concealed and those to be made 
public, they would only have been following the practice of that 
and preceding ages ; but they required the public confession of 
faults without due discrimination, and thus cast terror into their 
penitents and scared them from the salutary remedy of penance. 
But it was only to those penitents who applied to them that they 
could give either their advice or injunction to make this public 
manifestation ; which supposes that the penitents must have made 
a secret confession of their sins, and that they only told them in 
public subsequently to the order they had received to that effect. 
The abuse here condemned by St. Leo furnishes us with an ad- 
ditional proof that private succeeded public confession. 

Thus our preceding reasons are justified, and in point of fact 
it is certain that sacramental and divine confession went before 
that which had been introduced and admitted in certain cases by 
ecclesiastical discipline. The eminent and enlightened person- 
ages, from whom we learn this, lived in the times when public 
confession was in use. They could not be ignorant in what 
manner it was practised under their eyes: their testimonies are 
therefore unexceptionable and peremptory. It is therefore not 
to be doubted that public confession depended upon private con- 
fession; that the latter generally took place alone, the former 
never : we cannot therefore suppose public confession without a 
peeceding confession in private, any more than we can conceive 
an effect without a cause. After this, I ask you, what benefit 
do our adversaries receive from the holy Fathers who have spoken 
of public confession, since no one calls it in question '{ Why do 
they accumulate so many texts to establish what is not contested? 
Their object is to bury private and sacramental confession under 
this collection of passages; but they only establish and confirm 
it the more, since, every time that public confession is produced, 



416 .ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

it is impossible not to understand that confession also which had 
necessarily gone before and given origin to it ; and since, after 
our proofs, you are compelled to go back from that which is 
public and seen to that which is hidden and secret, as from an 
effect to its cause. Still more, if an attempt was made to prove 
that public confession was absolutely independent of any kind 
of confession, 1 and that according to the discipline of those times 
all sinners were of their own movement, without any counsel or 
direction from either bishop or priests, to divulge in the assembly 
of the faithful not only scandalous crimes, but also the secret 
sins he had been so unfortunate as to commit ! Up to this time, 
no one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever been bold enough 
to make such an attempt ; and I leave you to calculate the suc- 
cess that would attend such an enterprise against the plain and 
positive testimonies of Origen, St. Basil, St. Augustin and Leo 
the Great, and against the well known fact of Nectarius. 

We will now recapitulate the principal allegations of your 
divines against the apostolicity of the Catholic dogma of confes- 
sion. 1. Some say, and unceasingly repeat, that the first Chris- 
tians were never obliged to confess their sins in the ear of the 
priests, but to declare aloud those sins alone which had given 
public scandal. Whilst they are producing some positive pas- 
sages from the writers of the first ages in support of this asser- 
tion, I will present them with a few which ought to do some- 
thing more than embarrass them ; they ought toproduce an en- 
tire change in their sentiments and language. St. Leo, 2 blaming 
the practice of those who obliged their penitents to read aloud 
the list of their sins, opposes to it, as quite sufficient, confession 
made to a priest alone, and reprobating the presumptuous con- 
duct of such directors, as being contrary to the apostolical canons, 
clearly shews that private confession was quite in conformity 

' I am far from admitting that, should such an independence be established, 
private confession would be proved to have had no existence in the first ages : 
that would not be true : it is however most evidently true that private confession 
is always discoverable in the primitive Church, when once it is demonstrated that 
public confession depended upon it and necessarily supposed it. '-' Ep, to the 
bishops of Camp. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 417 

with them. Hear St. Jerome: 1 "If the serpent, the devil, 
secretly bite a man, and thus infect him with the poison of sin, 
and this man shall remain silent, and not do penance, nor be 
willing to make known his wound to his brother and master; the 
master who has a tongue that can heal, will not be able easily to 
be of service to him. For if the ailing man be ashamed to open 
his case to the physician, no cure can be expected : for medicine 
does not cure that which it knows nothing of. Quod enim igno- 
rat, medic ina non curat." 

"If your bonds are not yet broken, surrender yourselves to 
the disciples of Jesus Christ ; they are ready to set you free by 
the power they have received from our Saviour. And what are 
the sinners who must have recourse to their ministry ? They are 
those whose vices were concealed, and whose sins were not sub- 
jected to public penance. One is enchained by avarice, another 
by fornication, this by drunkenness, the other by a vain ambition. 
There are some who injure their neighbors and the poor, by 
taking or withholding from them what belongs to them; others 
accumulate usury on usury, in fine, we all labor under our re- 
spective vices ; we all stand in need of being healed by our Sa- 
viour, and of the assistance of his ministers, that we may be 
freed from the captivity of the devils." 2 

'(rod sees into the hearts of all men," says St. Cyprian, 3 
'• and he will judge not their actions only, but their words and 
thoughts, viewing the most hidden conceptions of the mind. 
II race, though some of these persons be remarkable for their 
faith and the fear of God, and have not been guilty of the crime 
of sacrificing to idols, nor of surrendering the holy scriptures; 
yet if the thought of doing it have entered their mind, this they 
confess with grief and without disguise, before the priests of 
God, unburdening the conscience, and seeking a salutary remedy, 
however small and pardonable their failing may have been. God, 
they know, will not be mocked. Having mentioned other such 
sins not greatly criminal, lie adds, "The fault is less, but the 

■ Comment, on Ch. X. of EccleB. '-'St. Athan. T. 1. p. 990. :1 Dc papain, p. 
134. Oxon. L682. 



418 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

conscience is not clear. Pardon may more easily be obtained: 
still there is guilt, and let not the sinner cease from doing pen- 
ance, lest, what before was small, be aggravated by neglect. 
All, my brethren, must confess their fault, while he that has 
offended enjoys life : while his confession can be received, and 
while the satisfaction and pardon imparted by the priests are 
acceptable before God. 1 ' These offences, though confined to the 
breast, are still punishable ; thoughts may render us criminal, 
and they must be confessed whilst the offender enjoys life, and 
while the pardon imparted by the priest can be applied to him. 
Now your teachers maiutain that actions alone were cognizable 
in the public confession ; therefore, mere thoughts and criminal 
intentions, which can give no scandal, could only be declared in 
auricular confession ; and you see the use and necessity of it in 
the testimony and doctrine of the primate of Africa.' 

Tertullian, 2 whom he called his master, had taught the same 
doctrine before him. Man, said he, is composed of body and 
of spirit; both came to him from God; each of them may offend 
God in its own way ; the body by action, the spirit by will and 
desire. He concludes that there is therefore an equal necessity 
of doing penance for the sins of the body and of the spirit, and 
even more so of the latter, since the will is the source and origin 
of every bad action ; and he continues : ' ' He who denounces 
judgment and punishment upon every offence committed by the 
flesh or the spirit, in fact or in desire, has vouchsafed to promise 
pardon by penance." Now of this penance Tertullian makes 
confession a component and conspicuous part ; and as confession, 
according to the acknowledgment of your divines, cannot be 
public for criminal thoughts, that are always devoid of scandal, 
the confession understood by Tertullian must have been private 
and sacramental. 

1 See moreover, on the necessity and the usage of confessing secret sins, the 
same St. Cyprian, Lib. dc Lapgia, p. 202, edit. Rigalt. ; canon IX. of the council 
of Neocesarea ; canon LXXVI. of the council of Elvira ; St. Basil, Ep. III. to 
Amphil ; canon LXI. on stealing ; St. Gregory of Nyssa. in his Ep. to bishop 
Letoius, on stealing and other secret crimes, T. I. p. 050; and other authorities 
quoted in the Hintoirc de la confess, aurie., par. Jac. Boilcau. 8 Lib. de I'cnit., 
c. IV. et. IX- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 419 

" Whilst we are in this world" wrote St. Clement, 1 " let us 
sincerely repent of all the evils we have done in the flesh. For 
when once we leave this world, there is no more confession, no 
more penance." Observe that this apostolical man requires con- 
fession and penance for all the evil committed : he makes no 
exception of any sins, he takes in secret sins, which are always 
the most numerous, for in the commission of sin, we avoid as 
much as possible the eye of man. Here then we have auricular 
confession At the end of the first century. If you are desirous 
of seeing it still earlier, open the Acts of the apostles. 2 "And 
many of them that believed, came confessing and declaring their 
deeds," that is to say, their sins, as the Syriac version renders 
it. "Was this confession made in public or in private? Judge, 
Sir. according to the principle of your teachers, by the known 
quality of one of the sins declared to the apostle, the domestic 
and private reading of books of magic. 

2. Others pretend that, according to the belief of the primi- 
tive Church, it was sufficient to confess to God alone, without 
having recourse to his ministers. Where are they to find in 
antiquity the proof for such an assertion, while the great lights 
of antiquity teach precisely the opposite doctrine ? The follow- 
ing testimonies shall enable you to form some judgment on the 
subject. " There is yet a more severe and arduous pardon of 
sins by penance, when the sinner washes his couch with his tears, 
and when he blushes not to disclose his sin to the priest of the 
Lord, and seek a remedy." 3 

" Let us examine our conscience to see whether our bonds are 
broken : if they are not broken, approach to the disciples of 
Jesus Christ, who arc at your call and ready to unbind you by 
virtue of the power they have received from our Saviour : what- 
soever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven, 
&c." 4 

" Xkcessarily, our .-ins must be confessed to those, to whom 

1 Ep, to Corinth, fragm. published by Cotelier. '-Oh. xix-. L8. 3 Origen, Hum. 
II. in Levit Tom, II. p. L91. Edit Bened. Paris 17:;;;. 'St. AtbaaaBins, T. I. 
p. 90b. 



420 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

has been committed the dispensation of the mysteries of God." 1 
St. Leo says that there shall be no declaration of all kinds of 
sins, given in writing and publicly read : for it is enough that 
the guilt of conscience be made known to the priest alone by a 
private confession." And again: "That confession suffices, 
which is first made to God and then to his minister." 2 St. Am- 
brose exhorted his people not to put off repentance and penance 
till death. " We ought," said he, 3 " to abstain from hencefor- 
ward from every vice, because we know not whether we shall 
then be able to confess to God and to the priest." It is indeed 
true that in our times those have appeared who would have noth- 
ing to do with the ministry of the priests, under the pretext that, 
from deference to the Supreme Majesty, they recognized in God 
alone the power to forgive sin. Let the reformation read and 
retract: "But on the contrary none do a greater injury to 
heaven than those who would abrogate its ordinances and annul 
the commission it has given. For, our Saviour having said : 
"Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven ; whose sins you 
shall retain they are retained ; which of the two honors him the 
most, he who obeys his orders, or he who resists it? But the 
Church shews itself obedient; whether it binds or looses sins." 4 
" Ye have been guilty of this sin (adultery ;) do such penance 
as is done in the Church, that the Church may pray for you. 
Let no one say ; I do it secretly ; I do it before God ; he knows 
my heart, and will pardon me. Was it then said without reason, 
what you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed in heaven ? 
Were the keys then given to the Church to no purpose ? This 

would be frustrating the Gospel and the words of Christ Beg, 

therefore, the priest to come to you (he is addressing a sick per- 
son) and open to him your conscience. Be not seduced by the 
reveries of those superstitious ones who would persuade you that 
confession made to God, of which the priest knows nothing, will 
save you. Undoubtedly we ought frecpiently to be acknowledg- 
ing ourselves guilty before God ; this we do not deny ; but we 

'S. Basil. In Quest, brev. Iie<j. 288. 2 Ep. CXXXVT. al LXXX. ad Episc. 
Campari*. 3 I.ih. II. ,/,. Penit. C. VIII. J Ibid. Lib. I. C. II. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 421 

tell you, and sound doctrine teaches you, that, you have need of 
the salutary sentence of the priest, which is to intervene between 
you and your God." 1 

3. Our adversaries, with these testimonies before them, being 
unable to deny the existence of private confession in times past, 
entrench themselves in the assertion that the faithful of those 
times did not believe themselves bound to confess all their sins 
in the minute and rigorous manner now prevailing with us. It 
remains to be seen whether they will be more successful in this 
their third and last allegation. In the first place, the evidence 
just brought forward establishes the confession of sins, without 
saying a word about a selection or exception of any ; the Fathers 
exhort to the confession of sins and inculcate the necessity of de- 
claring them to the priests. Upon what ground are our adver- 
saries authorized to exclude any, or rather, perhaps, the greater 
part ! What are the sins to be confessed to the priest; what, to 
<i <>d alone? Is it not a dangerous and blameable presumption, 
in an affair so intimately connected with salvation, to make ar- 
bitrary exceptions, where the Fathers have made none ? 

Protestants sometimes ask us to produce authorities for the 
exact confession of every sin ; but, assuredly, it is for them to 
bring forward express authorities in favor of the selection and 
exception of sins to be confessed. We however are so rich in 
proofs that we willingly comply even with their unreasonable de- 
mands. In an author of the first ages, 2 we read these words 
addressed to the bishops and priests: " Do not pronounce the 
BfBpe judgment on every sin; let each have its own. Form 
your judgment with much prudence respecting every offence, 
Whether <_Teator small." To prescribe an appropriate judgment 
for all and each of the offences, whether great or small, is evi- 
dently to subject them, without any exception, to the knowledge 
of the priest, mn! consequently, to sacerdotal confession. 

As, in the treatment of corpora] maladies-, the art of medicine 
has but one object — the recovery of the patient, hut greatly va- 

1 In the works el' St. Aii/u-tin. on visiting Ihe rick. "St. Gregor^ of Nyssa 
Can. Ep. !■• the /;, A. of Mytelerw. 
36 



422 ON THE CIIURCn OF ENGLAND 

ries in the remedies applied (for the remedies and treatment vary 
according to the disorder) so, in the maladies of the soul, as va- 
rious souls are variously affected, so appropiate remedies must be, 
applied." 1 If the director is to vary his prescriptions according 
to the difference and variety of sins and sinners, it is clear that 
the various sins must be known to him, and consequently dis- 
covered by the confession of the penitents. 

Look upon a priest as a father, confide to him your troubles 
and afflictions. Confidently open to him your secret soul. Dis- 
cover to him the secrets of your conscience, as hidden wounds 
are discovered to the physician. He, in his turn, will consult 
for your honor and your health." 1 This passage speaks for itself. 
We conceal none of our bodily infirmities from the physician, 
not even those that are the most secret ; therefore, we must not 
conceal any of our spiritual infirmities, however hidden, from 
our spiritual physician, but must make an entire and universal 
declaration of them to the priest. 

If the sinner, as becomes him, would use the aid of his con- 
science, and hasten to confess his crimes, and disclose his ulcer 
to the physician, who may heal and not reproach, and receive 
remedies from him ; if he would speak to him alone, without the 
privity of any one, and with care lay all before him, easily would 
he amend his failings ; for, the confession of sins is the absolution 
of crimes." 2 

St. Ambrose says, " If you aspire to be justified, acknowledge 
your crime. The bond of iniquity is broken by an humble con- 
fession of sins." 3 

St. Paulinus, the author of the life of this great bishop, writes 
of him that, " When any one came to declare to him his sins in 
confession, he wept to such a degree as to make his penitent 
weep with him. He seemed as if he himself had fallen with those 
that fell. He never spoke of the crimes confessed to him, save 
only to God, whose clemency he implored in behalf of the sinner." 
What then," exclaimed St. Pacian, 4 " doest thou who deceivest 

1 Idem, On the woman caught in adultery. 2 St. Chrysostom, Horn. XX. On 
Gen. * Lib. It, De penit. * Parcen. ad peuit. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 423 

the minister ? "Who either leavest him in ignorance, or confound- 
est his judgment by half communications ? I entreat you, breth- 
ren, by that Lord whom no concealments can deceive, to cease 
from disguising a wounded conscience. A diseased man, if 
possessed of sense, hides not his wounds however secret they 
may be, though the knife or fire should be applied. — And shall 
a sinner be afraid to purchase by present shame, eternal life ?" 
Is this the language of your ministers? How would it sound 
from your pulpits ? 

Having heard, as his duty requires, the various qualities of 
sins, he understands who should be bound and who should be 
loosed." 1 It is plain that the priest cannot know the different 
quality of sins, except by the entire and exact declaration of the 
penitent ; and as he does not and cannot exercise his ministry 
without this exact knowledge, we may infer from it the ancient 
usage and acknowledged necessity of confessing every sin. You 
will draw the same inference from the following words of St. 
Augustin : 2 " Be sorrowful, therefore, before confession : after 
it, be glad ; for now thou shalt be healed. Thy conscience had 
collected matter ; the imposthume had swelled ; it pained thee ; it 
allowed thee no rest. The physician applies the fomentation of 
advice ; he has recourse when the evil requires it to the knife. 
Do thou embrace the hand ; confess ; and in this confession may 
all that is foal be cleared away. Now rejoice, and be glad ; what 
remains, will with ease be cured." This metaphor is clear and 
expressive. Sins are the poison and corruption of our ulcerated 
conscience, which is perfectly cleared by confession. One single 
sin concealed would still keep corruption in the wound. Every 
sin therefore must be confessed, that the whole of the matter may 
be drawn away, and the cure be certain. By adding to these 
testimonies those of St. Leo, St. Gregory the Great, &c, I 
should merely fatigue your attention on a subject already suffi- 
ciently established; you have heard sufficient to conclude that 
according to the doctrine and belief of the first ages, all sins were 

' Bieron. Cm. in 0. XVI. Matth. « Enarrat. in PMl. LXVI. 



424 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

submitted without discrimination to the power of the keys, and 
that no mortal or serious offence could be withheld from the 
knowledge of the spiritual judge. 

Read over again, if you please, the passages I have just cited 
against this third allegation. It is very important to observe that 
they are not less decisive against the two first. In fact, there is 
not one, which does not shew the use and the necessity of the 
auricular and sacramental confession of all our sius. Therefore, 
confession made to God alone has never been regarded by anti- 
quity as sufficient, and the second allegation of protestants is false. 
Therefore, again, besides the public confession of certain scan- 
dalous prevarications, there was a necessity of confessing to the 
bishop or the priest even the most secret faults ; and the first 
allegation is equally refuted by the same proof. I have sepa- 
rately refuted both of them by direct authorities ; join to them 
the passages adduced against the third allegation, and you will 
find that they will thus derive additional strength and complete 
the particular proofs. It is the property of truth always to gain 
by examination ; under whatever point of view you examine con- 
fession in antiquity, the proofs start up in multitudes on every 
side to justify our belief; and the Fathers have never said any 
thing upon confession, which does not concur in confirming the 
Catholic doctrine. You have just seen it clearly taught by an 
unbroken and universal tradition reaching to the days of the apos- 
tles ; we have found it also in the Holy Scriptures, if not in pre- 
cise terms, at least by immediate and certain deductions ; it is 
therefore evidently traced in both the deposits of Revelation, and 
you can no longer doubt that the doctrine of the Catholic Church 
upon confession has been revealed by Christ himself. 

From these incontestable principles is derived an alarming con- 
sequence, which I cannot conceal from you. If confession re- 
quiring the enumeration of all the faults known to us, be the 
exclusive means ordained by Christ for obtaining forgiveness, as 
I believe you to be now convinced, in what a deplorable situation 
are you, Sir : in what a situation are those who have thrown 
aside this prescribed and necessary means ! How do they ex- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 425 

pect the forgiveness of their sins? A society of impeccable 
beings standing in no need of confession might undoubtedly 
have rejected it ; or rather it never would have been ordained 
for them. But such a society belongs not to this world, and its 
frail and degenerate inhabitants; we all sin, repentance is our 
indispensable resource and universal refuge. It requires, under 
the evangelical dispensation, the humiliating and salutary ac- 
knowledgment of all our sins ; such is the will of the Divine 
Legislator, such the condition to which he attaches the promised 
pardon ; and yet men have been so blind to their interests as to 
disregard and reject it ! They thought of nothing but cavilling 
at that which they had determined to desert, and they saw not, 
that by suppressing the necessity of confessing every sin, they 
deprived themselves of a resource absolutely indispensable ! 
They saw not, that by a terrible judgment of heaven, they con- 
demned themselves to appear before the last awful tribunal, 
covered with faults unforgiven ! Were there not any other evil 
in the reformation, I would on this account alone abandon it. 
Never could it make me impeccable ; it should therefore allow 
me to have recourse to that necessary means of recovering grace, 
a means which it will not employ. It cannot secure me from 
inevitable rocks ; it should therefore allow me to seize upon the 
only plank that remains after the shipwreck of innocence. In 
vain does it repeat to me : Confess to God all your sins ; and, if 
you please, to the priest, also those which trouble you the most; 
and then live or die in tranquillity and peace." What can this 
flattering illusion avail me? Jesus Christ commands me to con- 
fess them all to his minister. I read this injunction in his tes- 
tament; I hear it re-echoed from mouth to mouth, in the tradi- 
tion of every age. What is the reformation, and what am I, to 
change the ordinance of my God and his Christ? His revelation 
is invariable : as it was given, so must it be received ; we must 
conform to it, without retrenchment or alteration ; and since God 
chooses to pardon only those sins that are confessed to his minis- 
ters, the reformation is equally bound with myself to obey, and 
36* 



4 -t> OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to comply with the condition he has been pleased to fix, or to 
renounce the hopes of forgiveness. 1 

"All these proofs, you will say, appear solid and unquestiona- 
ble. But, if you compel us to prove the theory of your confes- 
sion, you will dispense with us at least from adopting it in prac- 
tice, such as it prevails in your Church at the present time. To 
speak for myself, I have lived among you, and have watched the 
administration of your sacraments. I have seen Catholics at 
certain times of the year crowding round the tribunals of pen- 
ance, but with little or no preparation : I have seen the confes- 
sors lend a ready ear to their confessions, and almost without 
remonstrance, advice, trial or delay, confer their absolutions. 
Watching the result of such proceedings, I have found these 
penitents of the moment returning immediately, from the tribu- 
nal of penance and from the sacred table, to the same licentious 
manner of life, and resuming their old habits ; sinning and re- 
penting by turns, vibrating between the world and God, and God 
and the world, and thus spending their days in a perpetual and 
ridiculous circle of worldliness and Christianity, of remorse 
and pleasures, of ephemeral conversions and sudden relapses. 
From these observations I have been led to conclude that your 
facility in giving absolution was but an encouragement to sin the 
more : whereas we consider that the forgiveness of sin is not so 
easily obtained : we consider that to regain the favor of heaven 

1 What shall we say then of that multitude of protestants, who have died, and 
who daily do die without confession, and without even knowing that Christ has 
attached to it the remission of sins ? Sincerity, and involuntary and invincible 
ignorance are great titles to the divine mercy, and can obtain from heaven such 
a disposition as would induce them cheerfully to recur to confession, if its necessity 
were known to them. This kind of implied willingness, this indirect preparation", 
this desire, ill expressed but intelligible to God, joined to a repentance animated 
by a perfect charity, would supply, it is true, for an actual confession of every sin. 
We should be glad to suppose this high degree of contrition and love in all those 
who die without the helps and the graces of the sacrament. Unfortunately we 
cannot dissemble that it is very rare, although it is the only resource that we know 
of, even for invincible ignorance. Do you, therefore, who are now rescued from 
such ignorance, pray with trembling, but not without hope, for your countrymen, 
your departed ancestors; and being yourself better instructed, inaKe use of the 
means which they were not privileged to know. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 427 

long continued exertions are necessary, to gain the mastery over 
our vicious inclinations and to eradicate the prevailing passion, 
and that till such efforts are made we never flatter ourselves that 
we are absolved by God. From all this I conclude, that, al- 
though you may be more exact than we are in theory, we cer- 
tainly surpass you in practice." 

I have hitherto been only discussing principles, and you reply 
to me by abuses in practice. Far be it from me to defend the 
abuses you have so justly held up to reprobation. I know that 
they are unfortunately but too true in some countries, in these 
days of darkness, and I condemn them more emphatically than 
you do. It would not be difficult to assign the causes of these 
lamentable and fatal abuses, if this were the place for it. There 
does however exist, even at the present day, (I speak more par- 
ticularly of France and England,) a great number of enlightened 
confessors, nurtured in the maxims of the holy Fathers, instructed 
in the true principles and the rules of ancient discipline ; a great 
number of prudent directors, careful to sound the state of the 
conscience, and to acquire a moral certainty of the sincerity of 
the repentance, and who are particularly careful not to endanger 
their own salvation and that of their penitents by a blind pre- 
cipitation, in pronouncing an undeserved and consequently a null 
sentence of absolution. Such are the priests that penitents choose 
for their guides, when they are sincerely desirous of working 
out their salvation and returning to God. Such also are the 
priests whom you ought to produce as examples, if you would 
wish to draw a fair comparison between the belief and practice 
of your Church and ours. Suppose, therefore, two persons de- 
siring to return to God ; one belongs to the Church of England, 
the 0th< r to the Catholic Church. How will the former set about 
the work? After reviewing, in the bitterness of his soul, the 
long continued disorders of his life, he will humble himself be- 
fore God, ask forgiveness, and pray for grace to walk hence- 
forward in bis law. So far every thing goes on properly, and 
cannot but be praised and approved. Again, he will assist more 
frequently at the public service of his parish, will be more dis- 



428 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

creet in his discourse and actions, and will apply himself to pious 
reading, if he is in easy circumstances, he will relieve the poor, 
and become a member of some benevolent society ; all which is 
assuredly most praiseworthy. He would willingly, I dare say, 
have recourse to works of penance ; but he has never been taught 
to consider them as necessary : he therefore rejects them, and 
lives at his ease. If he still permits himself some of those in- 
dulgences which are considered as excusable in human weakness, 
he has at least broken the course of his former iniquities, and 
begun a more edirying life. From this time he will soon per- 
suade himself that he has regained the favor of heaven. And 
here the question must be put ; whence does he acquire this con- 
viction ? and what assurance has he that he is pardoned ? He 
has no other assurance than that of his own judgment, and the 
testimony he bears to himself. Would to God that this judgment 
was not erroneous, and that this testimony was not a pure illusion. 1 
The Catholic penitent commences like yours, but goes much 
further. He knows that he stands in need of a guide, and ac- 
cordingly chooses one. He immediately feels that in the minis- 
ter of (iod he has found a compassionate friend and a tender 
parent. He learns from him what he must do to repair such or 
such an evil, and to restore all that belongs not to him, to break 
off an attachment or an evil habit, to fly the occasion of sin, &c. 
He receives a new plan of conduct, a course of prayers, of medi- 
tations, of alms and charitable works. Some time is spent in 
these exercises ; he returns to his director, who enquires into the 
actual state of his soul, applauds his efforts, encourages him by 
the great motives of religion and the examples that he places 

1 1 have seen in your Church and in the numerous sects into which it is divided, 
a multitude of persons estimable, upright, and honorably attached to their word. 
But the ancient island of Saints no longer presents, amongst its reformed inhabi- 
tants, either penitents in the true meaning of the word, or Christians truly pious 
and devout, and full of ardor for heaven, and of contempt for the world. Re- 
member that this was not the case before your religious revolution. 

Christianity changes not its spirit by age, or rather it grows Dot old liko us. 
Wherever it subsists, it is the same, and shews itself by the same effects. Tell 
me therefore, how comes it that among those who adhere to your reformation, 
there are found so many good kind of men and so few true Christians ? 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 429 

before his eyes, and continues to pray daily for him ; if he sends 
him back again, it is to try him still more. When he judges 
him sufficiently disposed, he exhorts him to redouble his fervor 
at the approach of his reconciliation, that he may obtain by hum- 
ble prayer the ratification in heaven of that sentence of pardon, 
which will be pronounced over him on earth : the moment being 
come, he solemnly pronounces the desired absolution ; then con- 
solation and peace re-enter the conscience of the penitent, in 
place of the weight which had hitherto oppressed it. He finds 
himself quite another man. But might not this be an illusion? 
If it could be so, at least it would not proceed from himself. He 
has simply obeyed the person, whom Providence had given him 
as a guide, and to whom he knows that Jesus Christ has said : 
"Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven." Can there 
be in this world a hope better founded than his ? If it does not 
entirely exclude that fear and trembling, which always accom- 
panies here below, even in the just, the great work of salvation, 
it moderates and suspends it by a filial confidence. But, being 
absolved and reconciled, will he not fall again into his former 
sins? He is always frail, because he is man. He may there- 
fore experience relapses, perhaps even grievous ones, but they 
will be less frequent, and of shorter duration ; he will hasten to 
rise again by means of the same assistance. By degrees he will 
gain the mastery : the frequent and discreet use of the sacraments 
will complete his victory over himself, and will elevate him to 
that degree of perfection, of which our feeble nature is susceptible. 
Judge, now Sir, between the two conversions, of which I have 
presented a faithful sketch. Which of these two penitents would 
you wish to resemble? Which appears to you more certainly 
placed in the way to life? Do you think that it costs less in the 
Catholic Church than it does in yours, to be truly penitent? Let 
us be candid. What do you require for the pardon of sins? 
You require of the sinner to repent before God, to refrain from 
hiii for tin; time to come, and to do good to the bestof his power; 
and you require no more. Now we require this also. With us 
repentance is the first of all conditions, even indispensable, never 



430 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to be supplied by any other. " It is only tears and repentance 
that efface sins ; neither angels nor archangels could do it. The 
Saviour himself does not pardon us, if we be not penitent." 1 
Such has been the constant doctrine of the Church from its ori- 
gin down to our days. But repentance the only condition in the 
reformation, is with us the first and principal, but not the only 
one. It ought to conduct us to the tribunal of confession, and 
there lead us to undergo the humiliating shame of discovering 
the baseness of our thoughts and the indignity of our actions. 
Even then we are not pardoned; we must be proved, and shew 
by our efforts to surmount our evil inclinations, that we are really 
desirous of changing our conduct: we must moreover expiate, to 
the best of our power, the sins and errors of our life, and fulfil 
in fine with this view the penitential exercises, which are pre- 
scribed to us to satisfy the divine justice. 

1 St. Ambrose ep. to Theod. 



AND THE REFORM A HON IN GENERAL. 431 

LETTER, XII. 

Satisfaction. 

"Satisfy divine justice ! What! Sir, has not Jesus Christ, 
our Mediator, made abundant satisfaction for us all ? And can 
you, without derogating from the infinite mei-it of his redemp- 
tion, require man to add any thing of his own?" 

Such are the sentiments I seem to hear you express. They 
are the sentiments and doctrine of all your theologians and of 
the reformation in general, but not of revelation. By revelation 
we are taught that the man, who seeks for happiness here below 
by shaking off the yoke of the law and by preferring his own 
will to the will of his Creator, deserves to be miserable both in 
this transitory life, and in life eternal, for his rebellious ingrati- 
tude to the infinite majesty of God ; by it we are taught that, 
abandoned to himself, the sinner (and all mankind are sinners) 
incapable of rendering to God a sufficient compensation, would 
have been condemned to an everlasting punishment ; that Jesus 
Christ, moved with love and compassion for his criminal creatures 
who were fallen, and yet were capable of rising again to their 
original destiny, voluntarily offered himself for them to the di- 
vine justice as a satisfaction which they were not able to pay ; 
that, by the infinite price of his blood, he could without doubt 
have atoned at once both for the eternal and temporal punish- 
ments, which they had deserved ; but that, delivering them from 
the first, from which they could not deliver themselves, he has 
been pleased to leave them to undergo the second, equally com- 
patible with their nature and with the felicity of heaven ; that 
thus, from the first sinner to the last of his children, all, even 
those who have been pardoned, have undergone or shall undergo, 
temporal punishments either in this world or in the next. 

Sometimes God inflicts these punishments upon us, cither di- 



4?>2 on tiie cnuRcir of England 

rcctly by himself, or by his ministers. Moses obtains the pardon 
of his incredulity, and yet is condemned to expiate it by a pre- 
mature death ; he is to see the promised land from a distance, 
and never to enter it. Nathan declares to David that his sin is 
forgiven him, and that he shall not die ; and yet, because he has 
caused the enemies of God to blaspheme, because he has des- 
pised the Lord, and sinned with the wife of Urias, he shall 
mourn the loss of his son, and spend his days in the tears and 
lamentations of repentance. 

Sometimes sinners inflict these temporal punishments upon 
themselves. Under the law as well as under the gospel, true 
penitents have avenged upon themselves, by voluntary chastise- 
ments, the sins they had committed. Job, for having sinned in 
words, perpetually reproached himself, and did penance in ashes; 
David, Achab.. the king of Niniveh, did penance in sackcloth 
and ashes; St. Paul 1 ceased not to bring his body into subjection 
and to afflict it, in order, as he said, to fill up what was wanting 
of the sufferings of Christ; and innumerable penitents of all 
ages have, for the expiation of sins long before pardoned, peo- 
pled solitudes and monasteries, and lived a life of privations and 
austerities. 

More frequently however, it is the Church which, in the tri- 
bunal of penance, to prevent the defect of our spontaneous mor- 
tifications, imposes salutary and sacramental penances, whether 
they precede or follow the absolution, which she grants. It is 
not necessary here to describe the canonical penances consisting 
of those severe and long courses to which sinners were succes- 
sively subjected before their reconciliation : with the edifying 
history of these you must be well acquainted. You know also 
that afterwards, to accommodate herself to the tepidity and the 

1 Colos. ch. I. v. 24. " I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those 
things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh for his body, 
which is the Church." What did St. Paul fill up in his flesh ? Temporal punish- 
ments. Now, what he filled up was wanting, as he expresses it. of the sufii-rings 
of Christ. The temporal punishment of sin was therefore wanting, to fill up 
afterwards ; and Jesus Christ did not intend to include them in his own sufferings, 
or consequently to exempt from them his mystical body, which is his Church. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 433 

ever increasing weakness of her children, the Church found her- 
self compelled to relax by little and little the rigors of her an- 
cient discipline. And yet, in her greatest relaxations never does 
she grant absolution without requiring some satisfactory work, 
more or less, to be performed by the penitent ; so that, from the 
origin of Christianity to our days, the constant practice of the 
Church supposes this belief universal, that after our faults are 
pardoned in heaven there still remains to be endured, on our 
part, a temporal expiation. 

God himself takes care to instruct us upon this great and use- 
ful truth : on some occasions he instils it into us by the signal 
chastisements with which he visits the earth, whether it be that 
he raises up nation against nation and lays kingdoms waste with 
fire and sword, or that he destroys whole generations by pesti- 
lence and famine. We cannot doubt that these are the scourges 
of an irritated God, who occasionally visits the impenitent with 
the punishments of time as well as of eternity, while he sepa- 
rates these two punishments in favor of reconciled penitents 
whom he calls to himself, after having chastised them for a short 
time, by involving them in the general catastrophe. 1 But with- 
out departing from the ordinary course of his providence, is not 
the temporal chastisement occasioned by our disobedience most 
sensible in the consequences of original sin"? Baptism for ever 
effaces from our souls the stain of this sin, and yet it leaves us 
still a prey to infirmities, sufferings, death, and to every tempo- 
ral punishment to which the human race has been condemned 
since the fall of our first parents. Is not this temporal punish- 
ment daily experienced in the pains and crosses we daily expe- 
rience, even after our offences have been pardoned for another 
world? Ls there a daj of our lives in which we are not all of 
us, whether actual sinners or reconciled penitents, exposed to 
the shafts of malice hatred and calumny; or to the pursuits of 
injustice, the vexation of disappointed hopes, of betrayed con- 
1 Tin- most alarming arid unequivocal sign of depravation is when nations are 
i i ited with some beavj calamity , and perceive oo1 the band that chastises them. 
Then if is iliat they grow worse ander the scourge and draw down more terrible 
punishments upon their blind impenitence. 



434 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

fidence and of hollow friendship ; or to the capricious and con- 
temptuous treatment of our superiors to the slights or rivalship 
of our equals, and to the infidelities of our servants? Is there 
a day in which we are not exposed to various contrarieties and 
accidents, and to miseries and mortifications of every kind? Is 
there a day in which we have not to suffer, in some way or other, 
not only in our own health and fortune, but also in the health, 
fortune and person of our friends, neighbors, relatives and ac- 
quaintance ? Are we to suppose that all these miseries and trials, 
whether great or little, befall us without cause, end, or reason? 
So the generality of men seem to suppose. You hear them talk- 
ing of their ill-luck, or misfortune pursuing them, of ill-omened 
days, of fate, &c. &c, and thus attributing to imaginary beings 
the real misfortunes they experience. But we, believing in a 
Providence of infinite wisdom and power, know that nothing 
happens by chance ; we know that nothing happens without its 
pleasure or permission, that the disposition of the smallest and 
most trifling events costs it no more than the organization of 
the multitude of insects imperceptible to the eye, and that if it 
has thickly scattered thorns in the path of life, the reason is be- 
cause we began our career with disobedience and crime. An in- 
furiated man heaped curses and execrations upon David : " Let 
him alone," said the royal penitent to the warriors around him 
who were anxious to avenge his insulted majesty, "let him alone 
that he may curse as the Lord hath bidden him; perhaps the 
Lord may look upon my affliction, and the Lord may render me 
good for the cursing of this day." 1 Let us learn from this to 
form a proper judgment of whatever misfortunes may befall us 
in this world, even after being absolved and pardoned in the 
other: let us learn that our fellow creatuaes are often employed 
by the Almighty as the instruments of punishment, and that 
whatever injures or incommodes us each day of our existence is 
sent us from heaven in punishment of the sins we have commit- 
ted, or of the sin we contracted at our birth : aud let us no lon- 
ger doubt that all these trials are mercifully designed to be so 
'II. K. of Kings, xvi. II, 11. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 435 

many means of expiating our faults. 1 Thus the manifest order 
of God's providence over us, the sentiment of all true penitents 
both before and since Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the apostles, 
the doctrine also of the Church so vigorously inculcated in her 
discipline, all concur to convince us that our crimes deserve the 
punishments of eternity and also of time ; that our Saviour, 
•whilst he preserves us from the former, does not exempt us from 
the latter, and that, in dying for us, he did not in any respect 
propose to dispense with us from satisfying, as far as we are able, 
the justice of his Father. 

Who would presume here to dispute the point with our Saviour, 
and ask him, why, being able to remit the whole debt, he has 
left some part of it to be payed by ourselves ? By his death, he 
has averted an otherwise inevitable and endless punishment ; for 
this, our fullest gratitude is due, and it is our duty also to be- 
lieve, although we may not be able to understand it, that, if he 
has put apparent bounds to his benefits, he has done so for our 
greater advantage. But who does not satisfactorily discover this 
motive, and perceive, in the punishments he still reserves for us 
to suffer, a design of mercy and compassion for man ? Had he 
emancipated us from every personal satisfaction for sin, we 
should have had a less idea of its enormity, should have thought 

1 If we only know how to accept our daily sufferings and trials and bear them 
wiih patient resignation, we should perform a penance preferable to any thing we 
could impose upon ourselves in this world. Our daily trials are not our choice, 
but are portioned out to us by God himself, who has fixed the time and country 
in which we are born, the parents who give us birth, the circumstances and rela- 
tiorjB in which we are and tbe social sphere in which we move. Whatever be- 
lall.- us, i- by tbe <li.-pn.-ii ion or permission of Providence. If things fall out ac- 
cording to our wishes, let us be thankful; if otherwise, let us submit in a peni- 
tential spirit : thus shall we always walk in the presence and under the direction 
of ftod: instead of the inquietudee, murmurs, and chagrin which others experi- 
ence to no oilier purpose than to the increase of their sufferings and their sins, 
w ■ .-kill always remain calm and resigned. Tim- piety would be to our interest 
and advantage in fhis world, patting out of the question the felicitj of the next. 

How many opportunities do we daily lei slip of appeasing the u rath of heaven! 
It should be our never-failing practice to bog every morning the grace to accept 
the contradiction« of the daj in the Bpfril of penance, and as some expiation of 
the multiplied sins and imperfections of our in . 



436 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

less of its fatal consequences, and have bad fewer incitements to 
reflect on the misfortune of displeasing God, and of being the 
objects of his hatred and indignation. From time to time, it is 
true, eternity and its torments would have entered our miud 
and troubled our conscience, but the hope of a future repentance 
attended with a complete pardon and satisfaction would quickly 
have restored us to our peace of miud, or rather to the dominion 
of our passions ; we should more easily have yielded to temptation, 
and have pursued with less fear and remorse the seductive paths 
of vice. On the contrary, by being subjected to temporal suf- 
ferings, we are taught to comprehend, before the commission of 
sin, how dearly it will have to be expiated afterwards ; and being 
moreover threatened with punishment in the next, if we neglect 
to perform our expiation in this, we become more forcibly struck 
with the numerous effects of sin, we hasten to begin our work 
of satisfaction, lest time should not be granted us for accomplish- 
ing or at least advancing it in this life. During the course of 
our penance, we conceive more disgust and hatred for the crimes 
which bring bitterness and punishment upon us : we make the 
strongest resolutions of avoiding them for the time to come, and 
courageously fly every occasion of them. And even the benefit 
of our redemption is more deeply impressed upon our minds, 
when we reflect that, without it, our greatest efforts would have 
been unavailing, and we should have perished eternally. In 
proportion to the severity of the satisfaction required of us, our 
circumspection increases, and our virtue is strengthened; as we 
may easily be convinced by comparing the penitents of the prim- 
itive Church with the penitents of our relaxed ages. Thus by 
remitting eternal and still retaining temporal punishments, a 
curb is put upon our impetuosity, a second barrier to the sallies 
of passion : and it is not true, that Jesus Christ, by making this 
reservation, has limited his goodness to us. I would rather as- 
sert that, by so doing, he has made it boundless and infinite ; for 
he has left more assistance to our frailty, and thrown more re- 
straint upon our natural perversity ; he doubly secures us against 
relapses and more efficaciously opposes our vicious inclinations 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 437 

Let those, who heartily apply themselves to works of satisfac- 
tion and penance, say whether this theory is false or true. 
"Man, equally frail and rash, stands in need of restraint in 
every way. He needs restraint by the prospect of eternal evils; 
and when this apprehension is removed, as far as it can be re- 
moved in this life, he again needs restraint by the foresight of 
other punishments that he will bring upon himself both in this 
world and the other, if notwithstanding his frailty and continual 
disobedience, he neglects to subject himself to an exact and se- 
vere discipline. Thus the foolish confidence, that so easily 
abuses forgiveness, and, if unrestrained, rushes forward into 
vice, is curbed and checked on all sides; and if the sinner es- 
capes in spite of all these considerations, we may judge of the 
injury he would sustain by the retrenchment of any of them. 
Who, therefore, does not see, that it is serviceable to the sinner, 
for the reasons we have mentioned, to be under the apprehension 
of such chastisements, and consequently that, in the remission 
of sins, we admit of no reservation of punishment, but what may 
be serviceable for the salvation of souls." 1 

Again it must be observed, that the punishments we have to 
undergo here below bear no proportion with the chastisement due 
to sin : the equivalent is only to be found in eternity, and the 
just compensation in the merits of the cross. The redemption 
of our Mediator therefore is perfect, and his adorable wisdom has 
discovered the only means of conciliating the mercy that pardons 
us for eternity, with the justice that punishes us in time. 

Now, Sir, I ask, is it derogatory from the merits of the cross 
to acknowledge that it alone has offered a sufficient compensation 
to the Divine justice, that it alone has redeemed us from an 
eternity of misery; that, without it, the human race was inevi- 
tably lost ; that, without it, heaven would never have been opened 
fee ;my of the children of Adam; and that no one -can expect to 
enter heaven bul by the blood of our Redeemer? Is it derog- 
atory from the merits of the cross to believe that, without a par- 
ticular application of hia infinite merits to each of us, it is im- 
1 Bonuet, Sur la mi faction. A fragment in la- posthumous works. 
87* 



438 ON THE CIILKCJI OB ENGLAND. 

possible for any one to reap the benefit of it ; that tins applica- 
tion absolutely requires our concurrence, because he, who has 
created us without our concurrence, will not save us without our 
concurrence, and yet that our personal and satisfactory works are 
of themselves but dead works, but that, being united to the suffer- 
ings and satisfaction of Christ, they acquire life strength and vigor, 
so that through Jesus Christ they are then offered to the Father, 
and in Jesus Christ are then accepted by the Father ? l Is it dero- 
gating from the merits of the cross to render ourselves imitators 
of the crucified Jesus, as far as we are able ; to punish, after his 
example, our own sins upon ourselves, as he was pleased that they 
should be punished in his divine person: to join our poor and in- 
effectual satisfaction to that which he has abundantly made for us 
by his blood? Is it not our duty to imitate to the best of our 
power, him who came down from heaven to be our model, and 
who has said : " He that will come after me let him take up his 
cross and follow me ?" Is it not evident that, far from derogat- 
ing from the merits of our Saviour, far from being incompatible 
with his sufferings, our temporal satisfactions are even absolutely 
inseparable from them ? Does it stand to reason, that, because 
we cannot offer a sufficient satisfaction, we are therefore to offer 
none ; and that, because we are unable to pay the whole debt, 
we are therefore dispensed with from making any attempt to 
pay, according to our capability and means ! 2 

How would such maxims have been received by the apostles, 
who were unceasingly preaching mortification and penance ? 
How would they have been received by St. Paul, who has so en- 
ergetically told us, that, if we would reign with Jesus Christ, 
we must suffer with him, and conseojuently must suffer for our 
sins, the sole cause of his sufferings? How would such doctrine 

• Council of Trent, Sect. XIV. Ch. xviii. *" Without the sufferings of our 
divine Saviour, your sufferings would be unfruitful; without yours, his would be 
of no service. His sufferings give the value to yours, and yours alone can give 
effect to his. Let the remembrance of his satisfaction support and direct yours, 
let it be your encourrgement and model, and let it teach you the necessity and 
manner of practising it." M. le cardinal de la Luzerne, in his pious and pro- 
found Considerations sur la Poss&m, page 328. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 439 

have been received by the Fathers and the great luminaries of 
Christian antiquity? by Tertullian, who thus addressed the sin- 
ner: "Thou hast offended God, but thou canst be reconciled ; 
thou hast a God to whom thou canst make satisfaction, and who 

desires it Believe me, the less thou shalt spare thyself, the 

more will God spare thee?" by St. Cyprian, 1 who vigorously op- 
posed those who reconciled sinners, by curtailing too easily the 
penance imposed : " What do they intend by such interference ? 
unless it be that Jesus Christ is less appeased by pains and satis- 
factions? unless it be that sins are no longer expiated by 

just satisfactions and lamentations, and that the wounds cease to 

be washed with tears? that every deep wound requires not a 

long and careful treatment ; and that the penance should be less 
than the crime?" by St. Ambrose, who, comparing the wounds 
of the soul to those of the body, wrote to a young person whose 
virtue .had suffered shipwreck: "A great wound requires pow- 
erful and long-continued remedies ; in like manner, a great crime 
necessarily requires a great satisfaction ?" by St. Augustin, who 
seems to have foreseen, even in his time, the error of the refor- 
mation, and who refutes it in these terms: " It is not enough to 
correct our evil manners, and to abstain from sin ; unless more- 
over satisfaction be made to God for our past offences, by peni- 
tential sorrow, by the tears of an humble spirit, by the sacrifice 
of a contrite heart joined to alms-giving?" 2 How would the 
doctrine of the reformation respecting satisfaction have been re- 

1 Bp. LY. tu Pope Cornelius. v The following profound reflection of the great 
St. Augustin puts forth in open day the correctness of our doctrine, and the er- 
roneousness of yours. '• Man is still condemned to suffer after his sins have been 
remitted, and although his sins are the original cause of his sufferings, the pun- 
ishment remains longer than the fault, lest the fault should appear trivial, if the 
punishment had ended together with it. It is therefore with a view to prove the 
he has deserved, to correct a nature prone to sin, and to exercise the pa- 
tience bo necessary for him, that man is visited with temporal punishments, even 
after be ceases t'i be* condemned, for his crimes, to an eternity of torments." S. 
Augnstin. Tract. CXXIV. in .lomi. 

There arc tli irefore, ever after the pardon of our sins, temporal punishments 
tu be and ei gone : and these pains are inflicted upon us, not only to exercise our 
patience and to prevent relapses, but also to impress us with an idea of the pun- 
tshment due to our ins. .1 ' iL I bila mi erke. 



440 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

ceived by the numerous other learned divines of these same 
ages, whom it will be needless to quote here since Calvin allows 
the uniformity of their doctrine on this point to be undeniable ? 
" I am little moved," said this pretended reformer, " with what 
is found at every step about satisfaction in the writings of the 
ancients. I perceive that the greatest part, or, to speak plainly, 
almost all those, whose works are extant, have either positively 
erred on this subject, or have spoken of it too austerely." 

Finally, how would such doctrines have been received by the 
universal Church, which, not only for the edification of the faith- 
ful and the reformation of sinners, but also for the punishment 
of their sins, as all the Fathers of those times attest, put them 
upon a severe and long-continued course of penance, the very 
description of which would shock the effeminate feelings of our 
age ? What would have been the indignation of the ancient 
Church to have heard the novelty of such doctrine? How would 
she have frowned upon its first propagators ! How loudly would 
she have reproved them! Soon, very soon would she have re- 
duced them to silence, or driven them from her bosom. 

In truth, it appears to me not a little strange that they, who 
in the sixteenth century broached these maxims, till then un- 
known, should have risen up with so much virulence against the 
Church of those times, when the ceremonies of satisfaction were 
so much reduced in number and severity. How came they not 
to attack the primitive Church, which went to such lengths with 
its satisfactory penalties, which never gave canonical penance 
more than once, and taught that after a relapse the whole life 
of a great sinner was not too much for the expiation of his sins 
and that he must not look for absolution till the last extremity 
of life ! Such was the discipline they should have characterized 
as cruel, merciless and barbarous ; such was the doctrine they 
should have condemned as highly and blasphemously derogatory 
from the cross and merits of our Divine Redeemer. But they 
would have been ashamed at conduct so outrageous : and more- 
over, the honor and reputation of the primitive Church was too 
well established in the mind of Christians to allow them any 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 441 

hopes of success in such an attack ; the insult offered to her dis- 
cipline and belief would have returned upon her unworthy slan- 
derers and buried them in merited ignominy and confusion. 
This the reformation was well aware of from its commencement, 
and hence its affected veneration for the Church of the first ages, 
and the opposition pretended to be discovered between the prim- 
itive Church and the Church of later times. The latter was ac- 
cused of having added fresh doctrines to the doctrines of an- 
tiquity, and superstitious and idolatrous practices to its ancient 
worship. The world was told that it was now to be eased of 
the cumbersome load of all its extraneous and modern dogmas 
and practices, and to be reduced to the simplicity of primitive 
faith and discipline. Under this specious pretext they succeeded 
in retrenching, according to their fancy, precisely that which 
had been believed and practised in the golden ages of Chris- 
tianity. Of this you have seen numerous examples in the pre- 
ceding letters. 

If the reformers had really intended to revive the ancient spirit 
of the Church, they would have loudly declaimed against the 
relaxation of later times. The enervated state of discipline, the 
Becesstty of satisfying God nearly forgotten, and neglected in 
practice, the coldness of piety, the decay of morals, would have 
afforded ample subject for declamation and well-founded invec- 
tive. They would have given an edifying example by returning 
to the ancient discipline, and would have taught sinners severely 
to punish themselves for their offences committed against God, 
and not to spare themselves in this world, that they might be 
spared in the next ; they would have subjected their penitents, 
if not to all the rigors of the canonical penance, at least to longer 
trials and heavier satisfactions than those which prevailed in their 
times. By so doing, they would have restored weight and dignity 
to sound principles, rekindled the fervor of ancient times, and 
encouraged all the Chupoh to follow their example, or have 
manifestly convicted them of base indolence and tepidity: and 

we in our days BUOuld have had the pleasing task of praising and 

thanking them for the infinite service they had rendered to rcli- 



442 ON THE CnURCH OF ENGLAND 

gion. How happens it that they have acted in this manner, 
after having solemnly announced that their sole object was to 
bring back religion to the faith of the primitive times? Must I 
tell you the reason ? It was plausible and useful to boast of their 
devotedness to antiquity : but the step they took in totally an 
opposite direction too clearly proved the hollow insincerity of 
their pretensions. Their real object was to gain partizans prose- 
lytes and conquests. To preach up mortification and inculcate 
the necessity of satisfying and appeasing heaven by expiatory 
works would not have suited their purpose. The fasts and aus- 
terities of penance were not adapted to the taste of the age ; the 
pale and emaciated countenance of the penitent would have thrown 
the multitude into dismay. The most effectual way to swell the 
ranks of their followers was to put their consciences at ease : and 
consequently satisfaction with its accompanying austerities was 
lopped off at a stroke ; and this too, so effectually, that not even 
were the feeble remnants of satisfactory works, still lingering in 
the world, able to preserve themselves from the general anathema 
fulminated against them. 

But there are truths so inherent in Christianity that it is not 
in our power to separate them from it, or even to rid ourselves 
entirely of them. Notwithstanding all this furious declamation 
against satisfaction, protestants are never backward, when occa- 
sion requires, to speak in praise of satisfactory works and to 
recommend them as useful and even necessary. They then ex- 
press themselves, just as we do, respecting abstinence and fast- 
ing, the care of the orphan and the widow, visiting the sick, 
alms-deeds, in fine upon all the works which are reckoned by 
Catholics among the most important satisfactions. "We admit 
that alms merit many graces, that they procure a relaxation of 
punishment, that they merit for us the favor of being protected 
in the peril of sin and death." 1 This is admitting, in other 
words, that alms appease the Lord, and in a certain way satisfy 
his justice. Eead their sermons : in them they produce, in order 
to exhort their people to repentance, the examples of Moses, 

1 Apology of the Confession of Augsburgh, page 117. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 443 

David and others, whom we instance in defence of the necessity 
of satisfaction. They will have their people to apply themselves 
to labors and groanings. in order to appease the anger of God ; 
but do not appeasing the anger of God, and satisfying his jus- 
tice, amount to one and the same thing ? Our grand object, in 
endeavoring to make satisfaction to God, is to appease him ; and 
the means they appoint for appeasing him are the identical means 
we prescribe and employ to make him satisfaction. Take up the 
"Book of Common Prayer" and peruse attentively the Commi- 
nation that is read on the first day of Lent, and also at other 
times, as may be appointed. It commences by informing the 
assembled faithful that, "In the primitive Church there was a 
godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as 
6tood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and 
punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the 

day of the Lord instead whereof, until the said discipline may 

he restored again, which is much to be desired, &c." Now 
that this discipline had greatly in view the edification of the 
faithful, and the conversion of sinners, is unquestionable ; but 
that it had also for its object the punishment of sins and the 
satisfaction to be made by the sinner to God, is not less true, 
according to the testimonies of all the Fathers of those times, 
as Calvin and other reformers after him have acknowledged. 

Allow me to refer you also to the beautiful prayers recited in 
your church, to beg of God seasons favorable to the fruits of the 
cartli, and in the time of dearth and famine, of war and tumults, 
or of any common plague or sickness. In these prayers you will 
discover the true principles of satisfaction in the acknowledgment 
made to God that these scourges are just chastisements, inflicted 
by him to punish the iniquity of kingdoms. According to your 
confession, therefore, there are temporal punishments to be un- 
dergone on account of our iniquities: and since you admit this 
in the case of entire nations during public calamines, you cannot 
but make the same admission in reaped of in lividuals under the 
particular afflictions of life: fur individuals compose nations, and 
there is not a day in which some do not meet with those suffer- 



44 1- ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

ings, which nations more rarely experience in seasons of public 
calamity. It would appear therefore that protestant theologians 
virtually agree with us in the thing itself, and merely dispute 
about the term. It is the word satisfaction that creates the alarm : 
one might imagine that they swore it should never escape from 
their lips. But you will allow that it is consecrated in the wri- 
tings of all the Fathers, and that antiquity holds no other lan- 
guage. It is not true therefore, as you reformers vainly boasted, 
that you were returning to the ancient belief and practice : and 
their idle pretensions to antiquity amounted to this, that they 
took from the primitive Church what suited their fancy, and re- 
jected whatever was irksome and disagreeable. Let us act with 
more honesty and consistency, and cling with sincerity to the 
ancient faith and practice; for the principle is good, we have 
only to follow it boldly. Let us then join with antiquity in be- 
lieving the necessity of satisfaction, and also unite with it in the . 
practice of satisfactory works. 

You are not to imagine, however, that I would subject you to 
all the rigors of the canonical discipline. My idea is briefly this. 
There are two things to be considered in the subject we are treat- 
ing : 1. The necessity of satisfying God, defined by the Church 
and proved, as we have seen, from Scripture and tradition. This 
necessity of making satisfaction is, therefore, an article of faith, 
and consequently an invariable dogma that we are all obliged to 
believe. 2. The manner of satisfying for our sins. This 
manner is determined and regulated by the Church : it is vari- 
able according to times and circumstances, like all other points 
of discipline. There have been two different degrees of severity: 
the lesser, at the time perhaps in which we live : the greater, at 
the time of Novatus, who, through an excess of severity, took 
away forgiveness from satisfactory punishments, which, by an 
opposite extreme, Luther has since taken away from forgiveness. 
The confessor who should now subject his penitent to the satis- 
factory punishments of the third age, would be almost as blame- 
aide as he who should require of him no penance whatever. Sin 
must be punished : but the punishments of former times are not 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 445 

to be required. The Church which had established them has 
also done away with them : its actual discipline is the law, and 
to this law directors must ever conform. As for sinners, they 
are bound scrupulously to perform the penances imposed upon 
them ; far from endeavoring to diminish them, their safest way 
would be to add voluntary punishments, remembering that if they 
had lived in ancient times, their penance would have been very 
different from what it is : that sins are not now less enormous or 
less, deserving of punishment than formerly ; that the Church did 
not then require too much from penitents ; and that it was with 
regret she has since found herself obliged, from the miserable 
tepidity of the age, to treat them with much less severity than 
their sins deserve. Let us then at least fervently perform the 
little that is prescribed ; let us even go beyond it and do more. 
Full of a just apprehension that we have not sufficiently expiated 
our offences, let us have recourse to the mercies of the Lord, to 
the infinite merits of the cross, the treasures of which are con- 
fided to the Church, and let us render ourselves worthy of the 
indulgences which she grants to those who apply for them with 
the sentiments of true contrition. 
38 



446 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

LETTER XIII. 
Indulgences and Purgatory 

I can imagine, Sir, the unpleasant impression which these 
words will have made upon you. I am not surprised at it : for, 
as yet, you only know indulgences by the portrait of them ex- 
hibited by your own Church. I will endeavor to represent them 
to you under their true features and natural form. When you 
see what they really are, you will soon, I trust be reconciled with 
them ; perhaps even you will feel a wish to avail yourself of 
them. For it seems to me that it is enough to know them, to be 
induced to seek after them. 

Sin, as we have just seen, deserved punishment in time and 
eternity : the God-man by his death had delivered us from the 
eternal punishment, but in taking upon himself that expiation 
which was beyond our strength, he had not exempted us from 
that which is proportioned to it ; whence we concluded that after 
our sin is forgiven and the eternal punishment remitted, it re- 
mains for us to undergo a temporal expiation. But it is abso-< 
lutely required that we suffer this in its full rigor and extent ? 
Or may not the Church, in certain circumstances, possess the 
power of softening its rigor and reducing its extent? We be- 
lieve that such a power has been granted her in our favor, and 
we gratefully acknowledge it among the benefits procured for us 
by the mediation of Jesus Christ. ' ' Whatsoever you shall bind 
on earth shall be bound also in heaven ; whatsoever you shall 
loose, shall be loosed." "Whose sins you shall forgive, they 
are forgiven ; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." 
This promise is general, excluding every kind of exception ; 
therefore it refers no less to the temporal, than to the eternal 
punishment. You likewise with good reason establish on these 
words the right of censures and excommunication, which you 
admit in your Church. But if by virtue of these words, the 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 447 

Church can retain the sinner in the bonds of excommunication, 
much more can she retain him in the weaker bonds of satisfac- 
tory punishment, and if, when she judges it proper she can take 
off his excommunication, why should she not lighten or abridge 
a less severe punishment? St. Paul' tells us positively that to 
the Church belongs this double right of prescribing and mitigat- 
ing satisfactory punishments. It is in the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and in virtue of his power, that he imposes a se- 
vere punishment on the incestuous man at Corinth : and in the 
name and person of the Lord, he abridges his penance, the year 
following. "To whom you have forgiven any thing, I also. 
For, what I forgave, if I have forgiven anything, for your sakes 
have I done it in the person of Christ." 2 

Supported by the example of St. Paul, and the promise of our 
Saviour, the Church has, in all ages, exercised this right of mit- 
igation and indulgence towards true penitents, according to the 
state and circumstances of her discipline. Formerly she ap- 
pointed the duration and certain relaxations of the punishments 
which she inflicted, because they were long and rigorous ; but at 
the present day, as her indulgence cannot extend to the much 
lighter satisfactions which she now requires it applies to those 
which would have been imposed upon us, if the ancient regula- 
tions had continued in full vigor, and which most certainly are 
not the less to be exacted in the next world, because they are no 
longer required in this. During the persecution, the confessors 
from the depths of their dungeons, requested, and obtained for 
penitents a relaxation of their works of satisfaction. Tertullian 
assures us of it, both when he approves of this custom in his ad- 
dress to the martyrs, and even when, after becoming a Monta- 
nist, he blames it in his latter works. 3 St. Cyprian admits the 
power of granting such indulgences ; and only reproves the in- 
discretion of certain confessors in asking, and of certain priests 
in granting them before the time. The council of Nice 4 per- 
mits bishops to treat those penitents more mildly, who by their 

1 I. Cor. v. 1. ■ II. Cor. ii. 10. ;, Lib. I. ad Mart. Cap. 1. Lib. de prudentia. 
0,21. « Canon Ilth. 



448 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

works and tears shall have; given unequivocal proofs of sincere 
conversion. The same spirit of compassion and indulgence is 
also shewn in the particular councils of Ancyra, Neoctesarea, 
Laodicea and Carthage. It would not be difficult to follow, with 
the learned cardinal Ballarmin, this traditional chain from the 
fourth century to the twelfth, the date which those of the re- 
formed religion pretend to assign to the origin of indulgences. 
It ascends incontestably to the first century, and comes from the 
institution of Christ himself, in the power which he confers upon 
his apostles and all their successors to bind or loose, to retain or 
remit sins. 

But in vain would the Church exercise such a power, if, on 
his part, the penitent did not concur to give it value and effect. 
It is the same with indulgences, and with absolutions ; their 
validity depends upon tbe sinners dispositions : and indulgence 
can only be usefully applied to him who has a sincere sorrow for 
his sins, who has humbly confessed all mortal sins of which he 
knew himself to be guilty ; who penetrated in a proper manner 
with a desire to satisfy the justice of God, has neglected nothing 
hitherto prescribed to him in order to such satisfaction, and seeks 
the favor of the Church with no other view than to supply the 
insufficiency of his former expiations : who moreover, after ful- 
filling the conditions on which the indulgences are granted, finds 
himself, at the time of receiving them, entirely absolved from 
his sins. For favors cannot be dispensed to enemies, they are 
only for souls who are either faithful, or admitted to reconcili- 
ation. 

When these dispositions, of necessity to be required, are found 
in the penitent, what effect will be produced in him by an indul- 
gence ? "We have seen, that by the institution of Jesus Christ, 
our sins can only be forgiven by the absolution of his minister, 
founded upon his previous knowledge of our sins and of our re- 
pentance. Except the cases of martyrdom and perfect contri- 
tion which include the desire of confession, there is no other 
means of obtaining pardon of sins. It follows that indulgences 
are by no means intended to remit them, but on the contrary, 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 449 

they suppose them to be already forgiven. There are bulls in 
existence, as I am well aware, which positively attribute to in- 
dulgences the power of remitting sins ; but they are decidedly 
fictitious and false and consequently no way entitled to regard : 
there are other authentic bulls, which may appear to exhibit the 
same sense and the same error ; but they sufficiently explain 
themselves, because they add that the indulgences are only for 
those who are truly penitent and contrite, and who have confessed 
their sins, which at once explains their principle. If such bulls 
are not so correct in terms as it could be wished, it is but just to 
admit that there was less reason to be scrupulously attentive to 
their terms, previous to the subsequent disputes on the subject 
of indulgences. 

Now, Sir, judge what ought to be your opinion of those among 
you, who not only represent indulgences as so many absolutions 
from sins committed, but even distort them to permissions and 
licences to commit in future with impunity every sin we can wish 
to perpetrate. We feel shame and pity for men, who could so 
far degrade themselves as to charge the Church with notions so 
absurd and extravagant. For they cannot have been ignorant 
that she has never ceased to condemn those agents or distribu- 
tors, whether avaricious or ignorant, who have too often employed 
themselves in disseminating fraudulently among the people false 
ideas on the effects of indulgences. 1 I repeat it; they can 

1 The general council of Lateran (anno 1215 under Innocent III.) to obviate 
abuses introduced by gatherers or receivers of alms, ordained that in future they 
should be nominated by the Holy See, or by the diocesan bishops : " Many of 
those wli" receive alms, and give themselves out falsely for other persons ; having 
advanced certain objectionable propositions in their sermons, we forbid any to be 
admitted as collectors, who Bhttll not have been authorised thereto by authentic 
letters from the Holy Bee or the diocesan bishop. And even then it shall not be 
lawful for thein to propose any thing, but what shall be obtained in their 
letters." 

" It having come to our knowledge," says the council of Vienne, (anno 1311 
under dement V.) "that several of that kind of collectors, by rash boldness, 
and to the seduction and ruin of bouIb, take upon them to grant, of their own 
pi. ware, indulgences to the people, to dispense with vows, to absolve in confession 
from perjury, murder and other Bins, to calm the consciences of the possessors of 
goods unjustlj acquired, for a -u>n of money, to remit a third or a fourth part ot 

38* 



450 ON THE CHURCH OF BNGLANB 

neither remit sins, nor the eternal punishment which sins have 
deserved. They regard exclusively the punishment which re- 
mains to be undergone in time, after the eternal punishment has 
been remitted. 

enjoined penances, to deliver from purgatory, as they boast of doing by a scan- 
dalous lie, and to transport to the joys of paradise the souls of the friends or re- 
lations of those who deposit alms in their hands, to give full remission of sins to 
the benefactors of those places where they collect, and further to absolve, as they 
express it from the punishment and the guilt: we, desirous of abolishing such 
abuses, which degrade ecclesiastical censures, and bring contempt upon the keys, 
forbid most strictly the commission in future of any and all such unworthy 
practices We understand and direct that all collectors abusing their commis- 
sion in these, or any other ways, shall be immediately punished by the bishops of 
the several places where they are found " 

'•' We ordain," says a council of Freisingen, (an. 1440) " that the indulgences 
granted by the H0I3" See shall be published and exposed to the people by the 
rector or some other well informed, learned and exemplary priest, nominated for 
this purpose by the diocesan bishop or his vicar." 

The council of Trent beholding with sorrow that the prohibitions of former 
councils had not been able to eradicate abuses, judged it necessary to cut at once 
to the quick : it suppressed the office of quaestor or collector, and would abolish 
even the name, in detestation of their scandalous abuses: it ordained (Sess. 21, 
C. IX. ) that in future indulgences should be published by the bishops, assisted by 
two canons of their respective chapters. 

St. Charles Borroma;us vigorously executed in his diocess this regulation of 
the council of Trent, without regard to any privileges which religious orders 
might have obtained. 

In tine, Benedict XIV. in his learned work Be Synodo (Book 13, c. 18, Xo. 7) 
does not hesitate to attribute to the collectors of past times all the storms which 
have been raised in the Church on the subject of indulgences. 

If Luther, supported by the councils of Lateran, Vienne and Trent, and by the 
concurrent sentiments of the most able divines, of such a man for instance, as 
cardinal Cusa, who gained the admiration of Germany in the legation which he 
performed, and in which he published the indulgence of the jubilee in 1450; if 
Luther had only risen up against the ignorance of the preachers in his time, and 
the disgraceful traffic which was made of indulgences, he would have merited the 
applause of the Church, and of all succeeding ages. But this man of violent 
passions, neither knew how to master himself, nor curb the impetuositv which 
urged him step by step to rebellion. The consequences of that too celebrated 
dispute are well known, as also how, passing on from the abuse to the principle, 
he went so far as to deny that the Church had any power to grant indulgences to 
penitents. 

" Give rather to the poor" he exclaimed again and again to his hearers, "give, 
for the love of God, to the poor the money which is demanded of you for the 
building of St. Peter's." Who ever doubted that we ought to give to the poor? 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 451 

But do not suppose that indulgences exempt us from all works, 
of satisfaction. It would be a dangerous error to attach such 
an idea even to a plenary indulgence. 1 For 1. According to 
the council of Trent, satisfaction is part of the matter of the 
sacrament of penance ; and it is not in the power of the Church 
to take away any part of the matter of a sacrament. Thus in- 
dulgences, however ample, cannot release us from such satisfac- 
tion as we are able to perform. 

2. The popes can have no intention of setting aside a com- 
mandment of Jesus Christ : it is written ; ' ' bring forth fruits 
worthy of penance:" and again, "unless you do penance, you 
shall all perish." 2 There is no part of our lives in which we 
are not obliged to accomplish this divine precept : none in which 
we can cease to be penitents, since we never cease to be sinners. 
And in fact, the popes, when they publish indulgences, always 
carefully enjoin prayers, visits to Churches, fasting, alms, <fec, 
and the jubilee bulls direct salutary penances to be imposed 
upon sinners : whence it follows that the Catholic who endeavors 

How often have Churches given up their vessels of gold and silver, their ornaments 
and jewels to feed the poor? But does charity towards our indigent brethren 
forbid extraordinary succor for the erection of a temple to the Lord, particularly 
in the Mother Church ? If the abuses in collecting alms in Luther's time are to 
be condemned, where is the man of sense and good taste who could blame the 
intention of those aim.-? Surely none of those who have visited and admired 
that Church, the most worthy monument which men ever erected with their 
feeble hands to the supreme Majesty God. 

1 It appears that Turpin, archbishop of Rhemes (an. 9G3) granted plenary in- 
indulgences to those who should follow Charlemagne into Spain against the Sa- 
racens, and that Pfaocas Nioephorus 2nd. not only wished them to be granted to 
those who made war with him against the same barbarians, but that those who 
fell in the expeditions might be declared martyrs. It was not therefore Urban 
2nd. (an. 1096) as it is commonly asserted, who first employed the expression 
plenary, in the i u< lnl Lfrires which he granted to such as should take up arms to 
deliver the Holy Land from the Turks. For the rest, if we consider how much 
itmnsthavi co I thecro aden to leave their affairs, their customs, their country , 
their home, their friends and families to expose themselve to fatigues, dangers, 
hazards of land and sea, climates and battles, we shall find in these expeditions a 
continuance of satisfactory works, which certainly deserved the indulgences which 
Urban 2nd. and other pontiffi after him attached to them, provided that they 
Were undertaken and finished in a spirit of penance, and with a pure zeal for 
religion. '-'St. Luke xiii. 5. 



452 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

frequently to gain indulgences, will pass his life piously in works 
of satisfaction. 

3. If it were even true that hy means of the indulgence, such 
works ceased to be necessary for us as temporal punishments, 
they would still continue to be so as preservatives from relapse, 
and as medicinal precautions to preserve us from the effects of 
our own vicious propensities. But who could ever promise him- 
self and feel assured that they were no longer necessary for him, 
in the way of temporal punishment ? Who has ever compre- 
hended the magnitude and extent of that which God has reserved 
for him ? He alone can know it, who has fixed its measure. 
As for us, being unable to fathom his decrees, we ought always 
to fear that our poor satisfactions are still very far from the mark. 
If you tell me that you found your assurance upon the authority 
of the Church, and the promise which she has made you of a 
total and plenary indulgence, I must ask you whether you are 
certain that you have perfectly availed yourself of it. Has the 
indulgence found you in the dispositions required to receive all 
the fruit of it? Although it be plenary on the part of the 
offerer, it may not be so on the part of the receiver, it is plenary 
in the intention, because the Church 'offers all that she can give, 
and the faithful can receive ; but in its effect it only becomes 
plenary by the personal dispositions with which we apply for it. 
St. Gregory 7th. grants indulgences to the bishop of Lincoln l 
"on condition," as he writes, " that applying yourself to good 
works, and bewailing your past sins, you make of your body a 
pure temple to God." Here Card. Baronius makes the following 
reflections : ' ' The indulgences of the apostolic see are commu- 
nicated to those who do not neglect good works, but by no means 
to the idle, slothful and those who slumber in negligence." The 
following principle is praised and approved of by Gelasius 2nd.* 
" Each one receives the value of indulgences, in proportion to 
his penance and good works." 

" Although," says Innocent 4th., 3 "indulgences are gener- 
ally granted to labors, perils and devout exercises, some neverthe- 

i Anno. 1057. 2 An. 1118. 3 An. 1243. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 453 

less derive more benefit from them than others, according as they 
dispose themselves for them with greater devotion." 

" The man," says Boniface 8th., 1 " who visits the Church of 
the apostles most frequently, and with the greatest devotion, de- 
serves and receives the most from indulgences." Pope Urban 
8th. * proclaiming the ordinary jubilee, addresses himself thus to 
the patriarchs, metropolitans and bishops: "Instruct your peo- 
ple that in vain will they expect to derive any benefit from the 
sacred treasure of indulgences, if they do not prepare themselves 
by a contrite and humble heart, and do not exercise themselves 
in works of Christian piety." Thus from the decisions of the 
sovereign pontiffs, the dispensers of these extraordinary favors, 
the fruit derived from them is proportioned to the dispositions 
with which they are received. But we know not whether we 
have had that exalted degree of piety and fervor, which alone 
could merit all the fruit of a plenary indulgence : consequently 
we cannot know whether temporal punishment has been entirely 
remitted in our regard, or whether there does not still remain a 
part move or less considerable, for us to expiate. Therefore we 
ought to continue the course of our expiatory endeavors during 
the whole of our lives. 

But, you will say, if we must continue satisfactory words to 
the end, where is the advantage of indulgences, and what bene- 
fit results to us from them ? I answer, that besides attaching us 
more and more to religion by the exercises of piety and penance 
which they ordain, they have a farther advantage very precious, 
and peculiar to themselves — that of supplying what is defective 
in our satisfactions. Let us only compare our works of satis- 
faction with those of ancient times ; let us think of all that peni- 
tents endured in those days, and of the little that we now do to 
recover the grace of God. And yet, are our faults less than 
theirs? Is our obligation to satisfy less urgent than theirs? 
Slothful and unworthy penitents as we are! Eager and always 
strong enough to do evil, infirm and without heart to repair it, 
what would become of us, if the Church left us to ourselves? 

'An. 1300. "An. 1624. 



454 ON THE CIIURCn OF ENGLAND 

For, after all the justice of God must be satisfied : the temporal 
punishment which he reserves for our faults must be expiated : 
it would never be so in our life-time by a mere shadow, a phan- 
tom of penance : it would remain then almost entirely to be ex- 
piated after our death, and for having spared ourselves so much 
in this life, we should have much to suffer in the next. But the 
Church can, and is willing to remit by indulgences, those suf- 
ferings which would await us in the other world, for having 
neglected to suffer them in this: and doubtless so inestimable 
an advantage cannot be sought after too eagerly. 

Let us therefore consider ourselves as debtors to the Almighty 
to an immense amount, the full extent of which we cannot know. 
How are we to proceed to liquidate our debt? We must imitate 
the wisdom of our forefathers in religion : like them be sparing 
in all our expenses, reduce ourselves to what is strictly necessary, 
cut to the quick, and employ our rigid savings, our fruits of 
long economy in solving as far as possible, our whole debt. 
Thus ought we to proceed. But what is our conduct? Scarcely 
any retrenchment in our expenditure : we go on much in the 
same routine, we have the same taste, the same fancies. "We 
live, in a manner, as if we owed nothing, as if we had no sum 
at all to liquidate. In certain fortunate moments we grieve per- 
haps to find ourselves so much in arrears, and we feel urged to begin 
in good earnest to pay ; but we set about it with an ill grace, we are 
afraid of taking too much upon ourselves ; the smallest sacrifice is 
a trouble to us, the least privation fatigues us, the slightest effort 
over-powers us ; we defer settling our accounts from day to day, 
and death surprises us before we have put our affairs in order. 
What is the consequence ? We shall not be free from our debts, 
and shall not escape the creditor whom we have neglected to 
satisfy. God will know how to visit upon us in the world into 
which he calls us, he will be well able to recover what is his 
due, but in a manner which to us will be much more severe and 
terrible. How fortunate then should we be, if while we are 
still in this world, we were to meet with some powerful and 
charitable personage, who would present us the whole sum which 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 455 

we still owe, and make us fit to appear before God, without hav- 
ing to undergo the rigors of his justice. Now this is exactly 
the favor offered us by the Church. From the infinite treasure 
in her hands, she draws and presents to us sufficient to free us 
from all farther debt, without requiring any more on our part, 
than that we receive her gifts with true sentiments of compunc- 
tion, love and humble gratitude towards Him, whose riches she 
communicates and dispenses to us. 

In a word, the temporal punishment which God reserves for 
us, must be accomplished : justice demands, and will have sat- 
isfaction, either in this world or the next. It is not satisfied in 
this life by our works, which are too insignificant, therefore it 
must be satisfied in the next: but the Church, by applying to us 
the infinite merits, of which she is the depository: saves us en- 
tirely, or in part, according to our dispositions, from the pains 
we must otherwise endure there. Such is the invaluable benefit 
of indulgences. 

I know of one method only of not requiring them ; and surely 
it was the duty of the reformers to teach it to the world, since 
they would hear nothing of indulgences. This method, which, 
after all, would not suffice in all cases, — would be for Christians 
to return to the purity of primitive manners ; and that for those 
faults, which human weakness could not entirely avoid, the an- 
cient penitential discipline should be re-established in all the 
rigor of its works of satisfaction. Then would the sinner pay 
the price of his ransom entirely, or in a great measure. Re- 
store to us then the ancient discipline or allow us in default of 
that, to profit by the favors of the Church. But since, accord- 
ing to your own acknowledgment, the former is become abso- 
lutely impracticable, it is madness to cut off the resources which 
the Church substitutes for it; it is folly, it is even a kind of 
suicide. 

To me it appears impossible to desire heaven, without loving 
and reverencing the Church who opens us an easy way to it — 
without wishing to procure a portion of the riches which she 
poors forth. Give me a man decided on quitting his disorderly 



456 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

life to return to God with his whole heart ; a man sensible of the 
fatal condition in which he has been living, of the infinite Ma- 
jesty whom he has so much offended, of the greatness of the 
satisfaction which he owes to him, and lamenting his inability to 
render it, either from having spent his strength in iniquity, or 
from being too far advanced in life to hope for time to execute 
his wishes : — with what holy eagerness will such a man comply 
with the invitation of the Church ! With what avidity will he 
lay hold of the resources which she presents to him ! What ar- 
dor will he shew to render himself worthy of them, and to reap 
ample benefit from them ! What fear lest he should let slip the 
precious opportunity ! For we know how to value remedies, when 
we have once felt the danger of the evils from which they relieve 
us. But it is not necessary to recur to such examples of striking 
or late conversion, souls the most devoted to penance cannot be 
ignorant that the satisfactory works of our days, are far behind 
those which the canons prescribed : they ought to apprehend re- 
maining still deeply indebted to God's justice, and feel in con- 
sequence the want of extraordinary helps, which will be produc- 
tive of more fruit in them, as they are better disposed by their 
penance to receive them. Thus indulgences ought to be equally 
desirable to the strong and to the weak ; to the latter, as a sup- 
plementary aid to their extreme inability, to the former, as the 
completion of their well supported exertions : and there can 
never be room to fear that the grants of the Church will be in- 
jurious to the spirit of penance, since they mutually assist and 
animate each other ; penance being the true disposition to obtain 
indulgences, as it is said by a celebrated author, while indulgences 
are, in their turn, the accomplishment of penance. 

Purgatory — Praying for the Dead. 

After all, our faults are so heavy and multiplied, penance is 
so rare among us, and generally so trifling, our dispositions to 
profit by indulgences are so defective and uncertain, that after 
having been absolved and forgiven, there must remain but too 



AND TflS REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 45 7 

often much for us to expiate in the other world. But where? 
In what place, and in what manner ? Had it been necessary for 
us to be instructed on these questions, Jesus Christ would doubt- 
less have revealed the knowledge of them. He has not done it : 
therefore we can only form conjectures more or less probable ; I 
shall not trouble you with a detail of them, having only under- 
taken to elucidate dogmas and not human opinions. 1 Of what- 
ever kind it may be, the place of these painful and temporary 
expiations has been appropriately called purgatory, by the coun- 
cils of Florence and Trent, 2 and whatever may be the kind of 
torments with which souls are there afflicted, we know and it 
ought to satisfy us to know, that they are in a state of suffering, 
unhappy and unable to help themselves. For them, the time of 
probation is past. It was confined to the few days which were 
measured out to them upon earth ; and with those days it expired. 
No more good works can they pursue, there are no more alms to 
be distributed, no more satisfaction to be offered to heaven ; one 
only method remains of making satisfaction — that of suffering. 
If this be the case, you reply, why can I not now stretch out 
a saving hand to all these souls ? particularly to those who were 
dear to me here on earth, to that gentle and affectionate soul who 
perhaps is at this moment suffering in those darksome abodes for 
faults, which but for me, she would never have committed ! 
why is it not granted me to be able to alleviate her pain, and 

1 Were I to ask you the situation of limbo, the place which contained the souls 
of the just departed before Jesus Christ, you would have nothing but conjectures 
to give me in reply : you admit the existence of Umbo, because its existence is 
ptoved to yon, although its local position remains unknown. Let it equally suf- 
fice for ii [J of the existence of purgatory, without troubling ourselves 
about its locality, without enquiring how souls can be confined in a place, since 
they were bo in that which we call Umbo, or Abraham'! bosom. 

8 All antiquity Bpeaks of some intermediate place, where souls previously to 
entering heaven, must be purified from tb >ir Let r stains. St. Cyprian, Ep. 2. 
Qrigen Horn, i St. Greg, of Nyssa. Disc, on the dead, pavrim. St. 

Greg. Great, B. I. Dialog ch. 39 and on the 3rd p nl. psm. St. Aug. City of 
ffod B. 21 ch. Hi and 24, Horn. 16 and often elsewhere; St Jerome at the end 
of his Com. on [saias. Thoodoret oil I < '•>!•. en. '■'•■ St. Isidore Lib. de oilic di- 
viu. rli. 18. Boutius, B. i, ps. I. V'cn Bede on Ps. 37. St. Peter Damian 
Serin. 2. on St. Andrew. St. Anslcm on 1 Cor. ch. :;. &c. &c. 



458 OX THE CHURCH OF EBTGiiAWD 

abridge its duration ! You can do it, Sir, it is in your own 
power. Do not believe your unhappy Beformation, it would 
bitterly separate you from those whom you have lost : it allows 
you to give them nothing but useless tears and lamentations. 
Take up other ideas. I like to believe that you have not pro- 
ceeded thus far in our discussion, without having felt more than 
once the necessity of being again united to the Catholic Church. 
Listen then to what that tender and venerable mother tells you, 
who reckoned your forefathers among her children of so many 
centuries. She teaches us, that we can, by our prayers and 
good works render service to our brethren beyond the tomb ; 
that we can alleviate their pains, and accelerate their deliverance; 
that our connexion with them is not broken, because it is 
changed ; that new relations have replaced the old ; that if we 
no longer live together, we are still brethren and friends ; and 
that if we can no longer, as heretofore, hear them, and couvor.se 
with them, we can at least still cherish them, and find consolation 
in the relief which we procure them, for whatever pain or trouble 
it may cause to ourselves. I am aware that this doctrine is, by 
your reformed system, rejected with ignominy as an illusion 
pleasant and vain, flattering and deceitful. Were it nothing 
more, why deprive us of it ? Were it only an error, why snatch 
it from us, if it be wholly innocent in itself, and if nothing can 
better encourage us when we survive our friends, than the thought 
that we may be every day of our lives useful to those who can 
no longer be so to themselves ? But, no Sir, the consolation of 
this doctrine is neither vain, nor deceitful; this intercourse be- 
tween earth and purgatory is not an illusion ; and God himself 
has formed the bond which unites them both, for the consolation 
of those who remain, and the relief of those who are gone be- 
fore. But this you will say, is no more than empty assertion. 
You shall see it proved ; I submit it to your judgment, and to 
that of your doctors ; let it be as rigorous as they please, pro- 
vided it be impartial and equitable. 1. This doctrine though 
confirmed by it, is more ancient than Christianity. In the time 
of the synagogue, the scripture informs us that sacrifices were 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 459 

offered for the dead. In the army of Judas Maehabeus, several 
soldiers had taken away from the temples of Jamnia, contrary 
to the command of God, certain things consecrated to the idols, 
and had concealed them under their garments in the moment of 
the battle, in which all these soldiers perished. Their fault, 
which was considered the cause of their death, was discovered 
when they came to be buried. Judas Maehabeus thinking that 
there was room to believe, either that they were not sufficiently 
aware of the law to understand the heinousness of their trans- 
gression, or that they had repented before God before they ex- 
pired, caused a collection to be made, and the money to be sent 
to Jerusalem, that sacrifices might be there offered for their sins: 
"because he considered," says the scripture, "that they who 
had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for 
them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for 
the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." 1 

This passage was too direct and clear not to dazzle those, who 
undertook, in the 16th century, a new campaign against purga- 
tory and prayers for the dead. They were persuaded that there 
was no other way to get rid of it, than to deny its divine author- 
ity, and accordingly they said, This book of Machabees was 
never included in the cannon of the Jews. But why did they 
not also say that it never could have been therein enumerated, 
since that canon was closed by Esdras, long before the days of 
the Machabees? They said farther ; some of the Fathers doubted 
the authority of that book. It would have been but common 
candor to add, that the greater number never doubted it at all; 
that it had been commonly read with the other divine Scriptures 
in the assemblies of the Christians; that the third council of 
Carthage, consecrating the ancient tradition, had ranked it among 
tin' inspired writings : " These are the books," it says, "which 
our Fathers taught as to read in the Church, under the title of 
divine and canonical Scriptures?" that St. Augustiu 2 places it in 
the canon of the Scriptures, of which he gives an enumeration; 
and quotes it in proof against heretics; that it is ranked among 
1 2 Machatx ■■ rii. !•'>, 16. ■' Lib. de doct. Christ, c. 8. 



460 ON THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

the holy Scriptures by Innocent 1st in his reply to St. Exuperins, 
bishop of Toulouse iu 41)5, and by Gelasius, 1 assisted by seventy 
bishops, in the decree of the Roman council in 494. Wc DreeJd 
not further dilate on the canonicity which this book can certainly 
claim; and -which the reformers, and your Church after their ex- 
ample, would not have thought of disputing, but for the striking 
evidence of this passage. Leaving fur a moment its divine au- 
thority out of the question, we shall carry our point equally 
well, whatever is attempted against us ; for the followers of the 
reformation admit the books of Machabees at least as an authen- 
tic history. It is then an historical fact, that in the days of the 
Machabees, the Jews, those who offered sacrifice, the synagogue, 
were all of opinion that it was holy and salutary to offer sacri- 
fices for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sins. 
Josephus plainly indicates 2 that the same belief prevailed in his 
time when he testifies that the Jews did not pray for those who 
had committed suicide. But undoubtedly they did not pray for 
those who were already in Abraham's bosom, where they had no 
need of prayers, nor for those who might be in hell, where 
prayers would be unavailing. Moreover, the object of their 
prayers was to obtain remission of sins for the dead, whom there- 
fore they did not consider to be in Abraham's bosom, where 
nothing defiled had admittance, still less in hell, which was 
equally closed against pardon and hope. Therefore they believed 
in a middle state between both ; and that middle state, (call it 
as you please,) we call by the name of purgatory. Now let us 
carry the argument a little farther. If this custom of offering 
sacrifice and praying for the dead, which presupposes the belief 
of our purgatory, was only an invention of Satan's, as Calvin 
would have it, and injurious to the cross of our Saviour, or, as 
your spiritual lords say more politely, a pleasant illusion, but 
vain and deceitful, how came it to pass, that our Saviour, finding 
it established, never rectified such an error among the Jews? 
How happened it, that he never cautioned his disciples against 
this illusory, false and superstitious tradition? Nay more : he 

1 B. 1. on the care of the dead. * Wars of the Jev\a, C. 91. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 461 

knew that all Christiana would religiously observe it for ages to 
come; that while they daily renewed the sacrifice of his body 
and blood, they would earnestly pray for its application to the 
suffering souls of their brethren departed ; he knew this, and yet 
did nothing to prevent them ! He knew it, and yet he gave 
neither prohibition, nor admonition to obviate a practice, which, 
according to the language of the reformation, is superstitious, 
and derogatory to the merits of his cross ! 

2. Let us go farther, and say boldly that he even approved 
and recommended this practice to his disciples. It must of ne- 
cessity have been so, if it be proved that the apostles instructed 
the Churches to pray for the dead. But this we can affirm with 
certainty on the principles which we have elsewhere established, 
and which I will here resume in a few words in the following 
simple argument. It is a fact, and all the liturgies in the world 
attest it, that the Christians of the fifth century not only those 
of the Catholic Church, but also those of separated communions, 
recited prayers for the dead in the celebration of the sacred mys- 
teries. Now this unanimous concurrence of all Christians, this 
uniformity of all the liturgies necessarily supposes a common 
cause and origin, equally recognised by friends and enemies, 
Catholics and separatists ; an authority even more sacred and in- 
contestable in the eyes of the heretics than that of the Church, 
to which they refused submission ; an authority in fine, which it 
is impossible to imagine and find elsewhere, than in the teaching 
of the apostles. To their teaching therefore, and that of their 
divine Master, must be referred the universal custom of praying 
for tlic dead in the primitive ages, the belief in the utility of 
su<-h prayers, and that of purgatory which is inseparable from 
them. You will find at the end of this letter the proofs of the 
first proposition. 1 I do not repeat here the development of the 
second, because 1 have place;! it before you already. 2 

This reasoning oughl to suffice to convince us, even at the dis- 
tanoe at which we are, that the practice of praying for the dead 

i See the subsequent Appendix. ! Sce the second general proof of tli>' Gatho- 
lic doctrine <>u the Eucharist. 
39* 



402 ON THE CJIURCII OF ENGLAND 

could only have been so universally established by the preaching 
of the apostles. Those who may not acknowledge all its force 
and solidity will not probably refuse to believe the positive depo- 
sition of enlightened witnesses of ancient times. You shall hear 
some of them, and learn from their mouths that this custom came 
from the apostles. Tertullian, who often speaks of praying for 
the dead, wishing to prove on one occasion that unwritten tradi- 
tion ought to be admitted, quotes as an example certain ceremo- 
nies of baptism, the custom of receiving the Eucharist fasting, 
and the offerings made for the dead: "If," says he, "you ask 
me for some law of Scripture upon these customs, there is none. 
But you have as a supplement to the written law, tradition, which 
custom confirms, and which faith causes to be observed." 1 It is 
manifest that tradition in the time of Tertullian could be no 
other than that of the apostles, to whom he lived so near. St. 
Cyprian 2 who often alludes to prayers for the dead, writes these 
remarkable words : "Our predecessors prudently advised, that 
no brother, departing this life, should nominate any Churchman 
his executor ; and should he do it, that no oblation should be 
made for him, nor sacrifice offered for his repose." The decision 
of the bishops, predecessors of St. Typrian, supposes the prac- 
tice of praying for the dead fully established, and thereby points 
out to us the apostolicity of its origin. St. Chrysostom gives it 
literally as follows : 3 "It was ordained by the apostles, that, in 
celebrating the sacred mysteries, the dead should be remembered, 
for they well knew what advantage would thence be derived to 
them." St. Augustin, who composed a treatise on our duty to- 
wards the dead, in which praying for them is continually men- 
tioned, expressed himself thus in a sermon; 4 "Funeral pomp, 
the crowds that follow, sumptuous expenditure in the structure 
of mausoleums, without being of the smallest service to the dead, 
may afford some consolation to the living ; but it cannot be 
doubted that, by the prayers of the holy Church, and by the 
salutary sacrifice, and by alms which are given for the repose of 

' Lib. de corona milit. No. 3. - Epist. 9. 3 Ilom. G9 ad pop. Antioch. 4 Serm. 
172. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 463 

their souls, tlie dead are helped ; so that God may treat them 
more mercifully than their sins deserved. This the whole Church 
observes, which it received from the tradition of the Fathers, to 
pra y for those who died in the communion of the body and blood 
of Christ, when, in their turn, they are commemorated at the 
sacrifice, and it is then announced, that the sacrifice is offered 
for them." In his work against heresies, 1 he ranks Aerius 
among the heretics, as St. Epiphanius had done before him, for 
having denied, contrary to the doctrine and tradition of every 
age, the utility of prayers for the dead ; both thus testifying to 
us that it was considered in the Church among truths revealed 
and known by apostolical tradition. Finally, St. Isidore 2 teaches 
it in these words: "Since the oblation of sacrifice and prayer 
for the repose of the faithful departed are made in the Church 
throughout the world, we believe that the apostles left us this 
custom by tradition. For the Church everywhere observes it; 
and it is certain, that if she did not believe that the faithful could 
obtain the pardon of their sins, she would not give alms for the re- 
lief of their souls, and would not offer sacrifice to God for them." 
I could fill twenty pages, were I so disposed, with what an- 
tiquity has said on this practice ; but why need I take the pains 
to transcribe, and you the trouble to read, since Calvin 3 himself 
acknowledges it in these terms : " It is more than thirteen cen- 
turies since it became the custom to pray for the dead." Would 
you learn what Luther said of it in the beginning of his career? 
" As for me, who believe strongly, I might even venture to say 
more, who know that purgatory exists, I can readily be per- 
Buaded that it is mentioned in the Scriptures. " All that I know 
of purgatory, is that souls are there in a state of suffering, and 
may be relieved by our works and prayers." Learn from what 
I am about to mention hew to estimate these two leaders of the 
reformat ion : the latter who was first as to time, after thus posi- 
tively assuring ug thai there is a purgatory, is found afterwards 
commending those who rejected it. "I applaud you," he wrote 

i Her. .">::, 75. -'l.ii> de oil.-, dwin. cap. 15 3 Lib. 2 Loatit. c. 5. parag. 70. 
Dispute at Leipsic Julj ". L619. 



464 ON THE CIIURCH OF ENGLAND 

to the Vaudois, "because while you deny purgatory, you there- 
by condemn the masses, vigils, cloisters, monasteries, and all 
that has been erected upon that primary imposture." Calvin, 
after acknowledging that this doctrine had been universally fol- 
lowed for more than thirteen centuries, adds that "all have been 
led into the error ; that a cry ought every where to be made, not 
only with the voice, but with the throat and lungs, that purga- 
tory is a pernicious fiction of Satan, which annuls the cross of 
Christ, does an injury to the mercy of God, and is the destruc- 
tion of faith." What are we to think of these two worthies? 
Shall I tell you the feeling which they excite in me ? It is that 
of pity ; for the gospel forbids me to indulge in contempt. 

Certainly I do not impute to the whole body of Lutherans the 
opinions of their head. I am taught to do them more justice by 
one of their most learned and virtuous writers, whose testimony 
I feel pleasure in making known to you: " One portion of the 
Protestant Church, founded upon the apology of the confession 
of Augsbourg, also approves of praying for the dead, and in 
fact prays for them. We are very glad to learn from M. Mola- 
nus," says Bossuet, "that one portion of the Lutherans not 
only approves but practises this kind of prayer. This is a rem- 
nant of those ancient sentiments which we honor in Lutheran- 
ism." 1 This passage of the apology, on which the Lutherans 
rely with great reason, is expressed in the following terms : ' ' We 
do not hinder any one from praying for the dead." 2 

Although your lords in 1562 took upon themselves to declare 
in their twenty second article that the doctrine of purgatory ap- 
peared repugnant to the holy Scriptures, truth, more potent than 
their opinion, has not failed to find apologists in your Church 
among your most distinguished divines ; I will quote some of 
them, and first bishop Forbes: 3 "Let not the ancient practice 
of praying and making oblations for the dead, received through- 
out the universal Church of Christ, almost from the very time 
of the apostles, be any more rejected by Protestants as unlawfu 1 , 

1 Project de reunion, Posthumous works of Bossuet, vol. I. p. !)0. 2 Do. p. 213. 
3 Discourse on purgatory. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 465 

or vain. Let them reverence the judgment of the primitive 
Church, and admit a practice strengthened by the uninterrupted 
profession of so many ages : and let them, as well in public as 
private, observe this rite, although not as absolutely necessary or 
commanded by the divine law, yet as lawful and likewise profi- 
table, and as always approved by the universal Church ; that by 
this means, at length, a piece so earnestly desired by all learned 
and honest men may be restored to the Christian world." The 
learned bishop often reverts to these ideas in his discourse : he 
observes, after St. Epiphanius and St. Augustin, that the con- 
trary opinion of Aerius was condemned ; and after having shewn 
that, according to the doctrine of the Fathers, the remission of 
venial sins could be obtained after death, and that there are 
moreover probable reasons for thinking so, he adds: "so we 
may maintain the prayers of the Church for the souls departed, 
to be beneficial, and not in vain, inasmuch as that practice of 
the Church, of praying for the dead, is derived, as Chrysostom 
confesses, and is very probable, from the institution of the 
apostles." Such is the opinion of a clever theologian, who with 
a view to promote a union of the Christian communions, had 
profoundly studied antiquity. 

Here are two epitaphs which will unfold to you the ideas of 
two other divines, in no way inferior to him whom I have just 
quoted. They had themselves composed their own epitaphs 
in Latin. "The remains of Isaac, (Barrow,) bishop of St. 
Asaphs, deposited in the hands of the Lord, in the hope of a 
joyful resurrection solely by the merits of Christ. all ye that 
pass by into the house of the Lord ! the house of prayer, pray 
for your fellow servant, that he may find mercy in the day of 

the Lord!" "Here lies the body of Herbert Thorndikc, 

formerly a prebendary of this collegiate Church, (Westminster) 
who in his life time endeavored by prayer and study to discover 
the right method of reforming the Church. Do thou, reader, 
implore for him rest and a happy resurrection in Christ." 

"I spoke severally," says the duchess of York,' "to two of 
1 Id her Declaration. 



466 ON THE CI1UKCII OF ENGLAND 

the best bishops we have in England; (Sheldon, archbishop of 
Canterbury, and Bland turd, bishop of Worcester) who both told 
me there were many things in the Pieman Church which it were 
very much to be wished we had kept : as confession, which was, 
no doubt commanded by God : that praying for the dead was one 
of the ancient things in Christianity : that for their parts they 
did it daily, though they would not own it." 1 That princes acted 
more courageously ; although she had to make great sacrifices, 
she did not hesitate to profess the truth, as soon as she had the 
happiness to know it. 2 

I conclude this letter with an observation which I might have 
placed at the end of each of the preceding. Is it not passing 
strange, that in every point which we have so far discussed to- 
gether, I have invariably found those at variance with the primi- 
tive Church, who so loudly professed to bring us back to her 
doctrines? On what then will they keep their word? And 
when shall we see them agree with antiquity ? They have seen, 
and acknowledged that in the most remote ages prayers were 
offered for the dead in all the Churches of the world ; and yet, 

1 Considering your 39 articles, I have often thought that in the Convocation of 
1562, there needed no less light and science to repress the mania of that innovat- 
ing age, than character and disinterestedness to resist to their face a ministry 
determined to legalize schism and heresy in the kingdom. These articles would 
have been drawn up very differently, if instead of Elizabeth's spiritual lords, such 
men had been seen seated in that Convocation as Andrews, Forbes, Montague, 
Taylor, Pearson, Bull, Cosin, Sheldon, Samuel Parker, Beveridge, Hooker, 
Heylin, Thorndike, Collyer, Grabe, Stephens, &c, or to speak more properly, 
and do them ample justice, these noble and learned personages would, no doubt, 
have scorned to take a seat there. Who, in fact, could be persuaded, that they 
would ever have consented to lend themselves to the views of the ministry, and 
intrude themselves into the sees of the lawful bishops, who, though born and 
brought up in the schism, were sensible of its evil and lamented it, and for the 
most part devoted to their labors and then - pens to bring back their Church to 
Catholic unity ? 

2 In the form of prayer published by the archbishop of Canterbury, for the 
thanksgiving ordered by the king, and appointed for the 29th November, 1798, 
for the victory of Aboukir, I observed with pleasure the following words, which 
indicate something like a return to ancient principles: "And for those, whom 
in this righteous cause, thy Providence permits to fall, receive, we pray thee, 
their souls to thy mercy." 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 467 

behold ! in spite of their engagement made and proclaimed to all 
people, that they would follow in the steps of antiquity, they de- 
prive the dead of the relief of prayers ! And not only do they 
in this abandon the primitive Church ; but even, — pretending all 
the while to restore her to honor, — they rise up against her after 
so many centuries : they resist to her face, as if they had beheld 
her, and had existed in her time. They met with a man, and 
one man only who in the fourth century, declared war against 
her for her pious regard for the dead ; and they ran to this man, 
and stood by his side : and they preferred one Aerius to the uni- 
versal Church which condemned him ! How astonishing is such 
a proceeding ! what disgrace ! what inconsistency of principles 
and conduct ! But Sir, I have frequently reminded you, that 
variations and inconsistencies are inherent in the very basis of 
the Reformation : there is not, and there never will be any firm 
and stable method, but to repose on an infallible authority, 
which alone can render the faith of a Christian upright and 
immoveable. 



468 OX TITE CHURCH OF EXULAXD 



APPENDIX. 



On Praying for the Dead. 



" Let us be mindful of our father?, and brethren, and of the faithful who are 
departed out of this world in the orthodox faith : let us pray the Lord to absolve 
them, to remit their sius, and tfa sir transgr sssi >ns, to make them worthy to par- 
take of eternal felicity with the just who conformed themselves to the divine 
will." * 

Another Xcstorian liturgy of Malabar presents us with the following words, in 
an admirable prayer: " Lord., God of hosts ! receive this oblation also for the 
whole Cath.ilie Church, for the priests and Catholic priuces, for those who groan 
in poverty, oppression, misery and tear?: for the faithful departed, &c." 

And the following words from another prayer of the same liturgy : "Strengthen, 

my God! the peace and repose of all parts of the world Destroy wars, 

remove battles beyond the extremities of the earth : dissipate the nations who 

desire war Relax also the bonds, the sins and all the debts of those who 

are dead : we beseech thee by thy infinite mercy and goodness." 

The liturgy of the Chaldean Xestorians: "Receive this oblation, my God ' 

for all those who weep, who are sick, who sutfer under oppression, 

calamities, and infirmities; and for all those whom death has separated from 



And in another prayer of the same liturgy : " Forgive the trespasses and sins 
of those who are dead; we beg it of thee by thy grace and thy eternal mercies." 

In the beautiful thanksgiving which the Xestorians make after the celebration 
of the mysteries, the dead are never forgotten: ''Bless, my God 1 the souls 
I, forgive their sin-." 

The Nestorians, differing from the generality of the Orientals, have a particu- 
lar mass for the dead: I find in it a benediction for them which ought to be 
at full length ; but I refer you for it to Le Brim, Tom. 3. p. 537. 

On the famous inscription foun 1 in China, and which bears witness that priests 
from Syria had preached the gospel th in the s iventh century, 

these words maybe read in th" eighth column: "They perform prayers seven 
times in the day, winch are very useful to the living and to the dead." 

The Armenians, like the greater part of the Orientals, have no particular mass 

for th ■ dead, a? our canon is not changed for such masses. But the Armenians 

* Liturgy of the Nestorians of Malabar. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 4G9 

when they celebrate for a soul departed, says: "Remember Lord! be merciful 
and propitious to the souls of the dead, and in particular to those, for whom we 
offer this sacrifice." 

Their liturgy exhibits very beautiful prayers for the living and dead in general : 
the deacon addresses himself thus to all the faithful: " We require that mention 
be made in this sacrifice of all the faithful, in general men and women, young 
and old, who departed with faith in Jesus Christ." Thf> choir answers: ''Be 
mindful, Lord! and have mercy on'them." The priest alone: "Grant them re- 
pose, light, and a place among thy saints in thy heavenly kingdom, and make 
them worthy of thy mercy. Be mindful Lord ! and have mercy on the soul of 

thy servant X. according to thy great mercy Be mindful also, Lord! of 

those who have recommended themselves to our prayers, living or dead : grant 
them in reward solid goods which will not pass away." 

The Greeks of the patriarchate of Constantinople have used for more than 
eleven hundred years, two liturgies under the names of St. Basil and St. Chry- 
Bostom : they contain the following recommendation of the dead : " We offer to 
thee also for the repose and the remission of the soul of thy servant, N. in a place 
of light, from which grief and lamentation are far removed : and make him to 
rest, where he may see around him the light of thy countenance," &c. 

It is to be observed that this liturgy is followed, not only by the Greek Churches 
of the Ottoman Empire which are dependent upon the patriarch of Constantinople, 
but also by those in the West, at Rome, in Calabria, Apulia, Georgia, Mingrelia, 
Bulgaria and the whole of Russia. On the belief and practice of the Russians 
and the Greeks in general, we have a very remarkable testimony in their, 
great catechism, called at first the orthodox confession of the Russians, and to 
which the patriarchs of the Greek rite have since given the title of the Orthodox 
Confession of the Eastern Church.* On the seventh article of the creed, we 
read thai souls, after death, cannot obtain salvation and remission of their sins 
by their repentance or any act on their part, but by the good works and prayers 
of the faithful, and above all, by the unbloody sacrifice which the Church offers 
daily for the living and dead." 

The liturgy of Alexandria, or of the Jacobite Copts, makes a commemoration 
of the dead as follows : " Be mindful also, Lord! of all who have slept and re- 
posed in the priesthood, and in every rank of the secular state. Vouchsafe, 
Lord, to grant rest to the souls of them all, in the bosom of the saints Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob. Lead them into a verdant pasture, to the waters of refreshment, 
into a paradise Of delight, far from which are removed griefs of heart, sadness 
and sighs in the light of thy saints." Here the deacons recite the names of the 
dead, and the priest continues : " Command those, O Lord whose souls thou hajjt 

received, to r.-|,.,.-e m thN |,] ;1 ee " lie returns to the dead iii a subsequent 

prayer: "Preserve the living by thy angel of peace, and grant, my Godl that 
ids of the dead may repose in the bosom of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob, in the paradise of felicity." 

The liturgy of the Abyssiniane or Ethiopians: "Have mercy, my Godl on 
inli of thy servants, men and women, \\li i have been fed with thy body and 

blood, and have slept at death in thy faith " The priest in a long and beautiful 

* (643—1689—1 179. 

40 



470 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

prayer, after the consecration, says again: "Save eternally those who do thy 
will : console widows, support orphans, and vouchsafe to receive those who have 
slept and are departed in the faith." 

The liturgy of the orthodox Syrians and Jacobites : the deacon says : " Again 
and again, we commemorate all the faithful departed, those who are departed in 
the true faith, from this holy altar, and from this town, and from every country: 
those who in the true faith have slept and are come to thee, the God and Lord of 
spirits, and of all flesh. We pray, we beseech, we entreat Christ our God, who 
has taken their souls and spirits to himself, that through the innumerable acts of 
his mercy, he would render them worthy to receive the pardon of their offences, 
and the remission of their sins, and would bring us and them to his kingdom in 
heaven. Wherefore let us cry aloud and say thrice, Kyrie eleison." The priest 
bowing down prays for the dead, and afterwards raising his voice, he says : " O 
Lord God of spirits and of all flesh, be mindful of all whom we commemorate 
who are gone out of this life, in the orthodox faith ; grant rest to their souls;.... 
and make them worthy of that joy, which is found in the bosom of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob: where the light of thy countenance shines in splendor, where 
there are no sorrows, no distresses, no lamentations. Impute not to them their 
sins. Enter not into judgment with thy servants, because no man living shall be 
justified in thy sight; nor is any one of the human race free from the guilt of sin, 
or pure from stain, but only our Lord Jesus Christ, thy only begotten Son, through 
whom we also hope to obtain mercy, and remission of sins, which is given through 
him, both to us and to them." 

The ancient liturgy known by the name of St. James,* quoted by the council 
t» Trullo, and explained in the fourth century by St. Cyril of Jerusalem, puts 
into the mouth of the priest the following prayer for the dead : " O Lord our 
God, be mindful of all the souls whom we have commemorated, and those whom 
we have omitted to commemorate; of all those who have departed in the true 
faith, from Abel the just till the present time : make them to repose in the land 
of the living, in thy kingdom, in thy delights of paradise, in the bosom of Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob our holy fathers, where there are no more sorrows, lamen- 
tations of mourning ; where the light of thy countenance which beholds all, shines 
in all splendor." 

St. Cyril* explained it thus to his neophj-tes: "When we celebrate the sacri- 
fice, we pray in the last place for those who are departed from among us, consid- 
ering that their souls receive great assistance from the tremendous sacrifice of 

our altars If the relations of some poor exile were to present the prince with 

a crown of gold, to appease his anger, it would doubtless be a successful means 
of inducing him to shorten the time or mitigate the punishment of the exile. 
And thus it is that by praying for the dead during the sacrifice, we offer to God, 
not a crown of gold, but Jesus Christ, his Son, who died for our sins, in order 
to render him propitious to them and to us, who in his nature is most inclined to 
clemency." 

The Mozarabic liturgy in Spanish : "We offer thee Sovereign Father! this 
unspotted host for thy holy Church, in satisfaction for the sinful world, for the pu- 
rification of our souls, for the health of the infirm, for the repose and pardon of 
* A long time in use all over the East, t Catech. Myst. 5. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 471 

the faithful departed, that changing their abode in those mournful habitations, 
they may enjoy the happy society of the just." 

"Assemble in the cemeteries," says the Apostolic Constitutions:* "read there 
the sacred books, sing there psalms for the martyrs, for all the saints and for 
your brethren who are dead in the Lord, and afterwards oS'er the Eucharist." 

It would be superfluous to quote the liturgies of the Latin Church, of which 
no one entertains a doubt. We can most positively assert that before the 16th 
century, there did not exist in the Christian Churches, any liturgies, in which 
commemorations and prayers for the dead were not to be found. 

•B.VI. ch. 30. 



472 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

LETTEll XIV. 

Invocation of Saints. 

I always recollect with pleasure, Sir, having often heard your 
countrymen recommend themselves to one another's prayers, and 
sometimes also, those, with whom I was more intimately con- 
nected, say to me on taking leave ; Adieu, pray for me. I never 
failed immediately to comply with their request; and in so doing 
felt an inexpressible pleasure, which however was always suc- 
ceeded by sorrow and sadness of soul. "How affecting is this 
recommendation, said I to myself, and how it savors of ancient 
and primitive manners ! It reminds one of the Apostles, and 
shews that we still practice a lesson which they so frequently 
taught their disciples ! But, alas ! these people hesitate not to 
beg°prayers from me, a poor and miserable sinner, full of imper- 
fections and loaded, God knows, with so many sins; and they 
would consider it a crime to beg the prayers and intercession of 
the saints in heaven ! they pronounce me highly criminal in ad- 
dressing to them the same invocation ! and treat it as vain, su- 
perstitious, and sometimes even, idolatrous ! Yet, Englishmen 
boast of possessing more enlightened minds and cultivated reason 
than people of other countries ; and in many respects I willingly 
recognize their just claim to pre-eminence ; on this subject, how- 
ever, no such concession can be made : for, undoubtedly, the 
opposite is the fact : it must therefore follow that they do not give 
to this subject the attention that it deserves." 

In fact, you are told from your infancy, in order to prejudice 
you against the Catholic doctrine, that it is perfectly useless to 
invoke the saints in heaven, because they cannot hear us: you: 
have perhaps even been told by some that, could they hear you, 
it would be criminal to invoke them because it would be making 
many mediators, whereas we ought to acknowledge but one : and 
because, to suppose in the saints a power to assist us, would be 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 473 

to turn them into the demigods of paganism, and under new 
names, to introduce that idolatry which Jesus Christ came to 
destroy. These notions are impressed upon the minds of Pro- 
testants, from their tenderest infancy ; they grow with their 
growth, are strengthened with their advancing years, and gen- 
erally attend them through life, because it is not the fashion in 
the world to examine into religious matters. But you, Sir, who 
have been rescued by grace from that indifference in which most 
men are dangerously slumbering, you, who have had the grace 
to feel that, of all affairs, the affair of your salvation is the most 
important, listen again with patience to what I have to say on 
this subject; and I trust you will soon become divested of the 
prejudices you have imbibed. 

It is useless, you have been told, to have recourse to the 
saints in heaven, since tbey cannot hear you. And how do they 
come to this decision ? what proofs have they for so bold an as- 
sertion? If tbey merely pretend that of themselves, by any 
quality or property of their nature, they cannot hear our prayers, 
and penetrate into our interior thoughts, or the secret motions 
of our hearts, I agree with them : but this is not sufficient to up- 
root the foundation of our invocation : to effect this, it must 
moreover be maintained that God cannot communicate this knowl- 
edge to them. Now, to deny such a power in God, would be an 
extravagant folly and blasphemy. The Holy Scripture 1 testifies 
that he has often communicated such knowledge to his servants 
on earth. Eliseus sees, as if he were present, what passes be- 
tween Giezi and Naaman : " Was not my heart present, when 
the man turned back from his chariot to meet thee ? So now 

thou hast received money, and received garments, &c But 

the leprosy of Naaman shall also stick to thee and to thy seed 
for ever." The same prophet 2 knows what is said in the secret 
council of the king of Syria, who thinks that he is betrayed by 
his confidential friends: "And calling together his servants, 
he s.ii'l : " Why do you not tell me who it is that betrays me to 
the king of Israel? And duo of his servants said : No one, my 
> IV. Kingd, v. 26, 27. *IV. Kinga, vi. 11, 12. 



474 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

lord, kin;? ! but Eliseus the prophet, that is in Israel, telleth 
the king of Israel all the words that thou speakest in thy privy 
chamber. " St. Peter 1 knew the fraudulent transaction of Ana- 
nias and Sapphira, who, confident of being undiscovered, wished 
to have the merit of a generous contribution of their whole pro- 
perty, while at the same time they withheld a part of the sum 
for which it was sold. 

If God has revealed to his servants upon earth the knowledge 
of what was deliberating and doing in their absence, why should 
he not be able to favor his elect in heaven with a similar revela- 
tion ? Shall the distance of place prevent it ? This to the Al- 
mighty is nothing. Shall the privation of bodily organs in the 
saints in heaven be an obstacle ? Such a privation, so far from 
being an obstacle, would afford a greater facility. The organs 
of the body oppress and shackle the faculties of the soul, which, 
when once disengaged from gross and lumpish matter, must ac- 
quire more energy and prcceptibility. " For we know in part." 
says St. Paul, 2 "and we prophesy in part. But when that 
which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done 
away." Spirits acquire a purer penetration, when they are freed 
from the body, because the carnal part no longer presents obsta- 
cles to them. 3 It is therefore certain that in the bosom of glory 
the blessed spirits are more susceptible of knowledge than they 
were in their earthly tabernacles ; and if God has communicated 
to them upon earth the knowledge of what the eyes could not 
see, nor the ears hear, with much more reason is he able imme- 
diately to reveal it to them in heaven. 

That this is possible cannot be denied ; for the Scripture shews 
its possibility plainly enough. You remember what is there said 
of Lazarus and the rich man : 4 the latter addresses his prayer 
to Abraham from the bottom of hell, and Abraham becomes so 
well acquainted with the purport of his request that he appro- 
priately replies to it. If a prayer put up from the infernal abode 
could penetrate to limbo, with much more reason shall it pass 

> Acts, v. 3. 2 I Cor. xiii. 9, 10. :) St. Clement of Alex. Strom. B. VI. <St. 
Luke, xvi. id. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 475 

from earth to heaven. Observe also that Abraham tells Dives 
that his brethren have Moses and the prophets, and that if they 
will not hear them, neither will they hear, if any one should be 
sent to them from another world. Abraham therefore must 
have known that Moses and the prophets had existed and had 
left writings behind them for the instruction of their posterity. 
The Almighty having revealed this knowledge to Abraham, why 
should he not reveal to his glorified saints the knowledge of the 
prayers that we here below address to them in heaven ? Per- 
haps it may be said that this story of the rich man and the poor 
beggar is but a parable. I should feel no difficulty in allowing 
as much, although I might consider it as a fact, in company with 
St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, St. 
Augustin, and many others. But allowing it to be a parable, it 
cannot go on an impossibility : and Jesus Christ would never 
have represented Abraham as replying to the petition made to 
him, and as instructed in events occurring upon earth long after 
this time, if this kind of knowledge had been repugnant to the 
nature of things. 

Our Lord teaches us that there is joy in heaven when a sinner 
does penance. 1 By whom is this joy experienced, unless by all 
the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem ? For there is no excep- 
tion made ; it is all heaven that rejoices. Therefore the conver- 
sion that takes place in this world must be known to the blessed 
in the other. It is indeed true that Jesus Christ says almost 
immediately afterwards that there shall be joy before the angels 
of God over the repenting sinner ; but the addition by which he 
particularly mentions the angels, does not destroy what he has 
just said respecting the heavenly inhabitants in general. It 
would not be at all unreasonable to suppose that they were all 
comprised under the denomination of angels : for Christ teaches 
us that the glorified saints are like to the angels, and we find 
them in Scripture performing the same functions and enjoying 
tin' same qualities aa the angels. Open the book of the Apo- 
calypse : St. John 2 represents to us the whole of the saints un- 
1 St. Luke, xv. 7. *St. John, v. 



476 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

der the name and appearance of twenty-four ancients prostrate 
before the throne of Jesus Christ, offering him, like the angels, 
golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of the faithful 
upon earth. They present them ; therefore they must have re- 
ceived — must have heard them ; and we may without fear ad- 
dress fresh supplications to them, that by their hands they may 
ascend like an agreeable incense before the throne of the Lamb. 
The same apostle' describes the souls of the martyrs as being 
acquainted with the state of the Church and the persecutions 
which they prayed might terminate, and yet being given to un- 
derstand that these persecutions should continue a little time 
longer and also the reason of this continuance. At the fall of 
Babylon, the apostles and martyrs are invited to praise God for 
his judgments; and immediately canticles of admiration resound 
through the heavenly mansions. 2 And in a preceding chapter 3 
you may read this magnificent promise of Jesus Christ: " And 
he that shall overcome and keep my works unto the end (this 
evidently refers to those who have finished their first career and 
begun that which never shall end) I will give him power over 
the nations ; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron ; and as 
the vessel of the potter they shall be broken, as I also have re- 
ceived from my Father." Can any one obtain over nations a 
power equal to that of our Saviour, so as to chastise and crush 
them under his sceptre, unless he knows what is going on among 
them, what is done, said, devised and desired by them? Let us 
hear no more then of rejecting the invocation of saints, under 
the pretext that they cannot hear our prayers. Let Christians 
of every denomination at length become sensible how improper 
it is to invent ideas and fancies so totally at variance with what 
revelation teaches, and let us hear no more of these fictitious 
and imaginary impossibilities. 

But, granting it to be possible for the saints to hear our prayers, 

it would still be criminal, they will tell you, to pray to them, 

because we are only to pray to our one and only Mediator, Jesus 

Christ. Truly, they, who hold out such language, must reflect 

1 St. John, vi. 9, 10, 11. 2 xviii. 20. *ii. 26. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 477 

very little before they speak. I should be glad to ask them, 
whether they think that the Mediatorship of our Saviour is af- 
fected when they recommend themselves to one anothers prayers 
on earth. Undoubtedly not. Then why should it suffer injury, 
when we recommend ourselves to the prayers of the saints ? 
Whether we address ourselves to those who are yet with us, or 
to those who are no longer among us, our request is exactly the 
same ; we say both to one and the other : Pray for us, and no- 
thing more. In both cases, we invoke the same mark of interest 
and benevolence of our friends and brethren. The only differ- 
ence is that you confine your prayer to those who are with you 
in this world, whereas we extend it to those who are gone before 
us into the next. But, certainly, this difference in the state of 
the persons, makes no difference in the nature of the petition. 
If it is innocent in regard of the former, it is not less so in re- 
spect of the latter. If, by addressing ourselves to the saints in 
heaven, we multiply our mediators, you also multiply them, by 
addressing yourselves to your friends on earth. When, in com- 
pliance with your request, they pray for you, they become as 
much your patrons, advocates, intercessors and mediators as the 
saints in heaven are ours. Perhaps these titles of patrons, in- 
tercessors, and mediators, offend you. If so, do away with them ; 
we care but little about them ; words are of little importance ; it 
is the thing itself, and that only, that we contend for. 

Rigorously speaking, we have all but one Mediator, the God- 
Man, who has redeemed us, who alone could do it, alone has 
been able to cleanse us from our sins in his precious blood, alone 
could intercede efficaciously for us in heaven ; from him and his 
merits alone our prayers and good works receive all their value ; 
it is only through him that they can become agreeable to his 
Father, only through him that they must reach him, whether we 
ourselves present them directly to him, or whether, to render 
tin-in more acceptable, we employ the ministry of his elect. — 
" Christians," says St. Augustin, 1 "recommend themselves to 
each others prayers; but he, who intercedes for, all, without 
'Lib. 1 1, Contra Parmen. ('. VI. 



478 ox the church of England 

standing in need of being interceded for by any one, he is the 
only and true Mediator." 

And yet the same doctor every where teaches the invocation 
of saints, and in the beautiful prayers he has left us, he calls 
them patrons and advocates. St. Gregory of Nazianzum 1 ex- 
plains the mediation of Jesus Christ in an admirable manner, 
which can only apply to our Saviour, and yet makes no difficulty 
in taking mediation in a sense infinitely inferior, when he says 
that " the holy martyrs are the mediators of this elevation which 
renders us divine." St. Athanasius, who will not be accused of 
slighting the sovereign mediatorship of our Saviour, invokes the 
Blessed Virgin, under the title of patron, our lady and our queen, 
and St. Chrysostom calls the saints, " defenders and patrons of 
of the masters of the world, who invoke their intercession at their 
tombs." St. Basil was not ignorant that every grace comes from 
God through the all-powerful intercession of his Son, and yet he 
asks the prayers of the forty martyrs, and calls them "our de- 
fence, our refuge, the protectors and guardians of the human 
race." This is the language of antiquity. You will soon hear 
it in the passages I am about to place before you. Why then 
should we fear to say as our fathers and masters have said ? 
"Holy martyr! restore me my Son, you know why I weep." 
How would your teachers be scandalized at this short and lively 
prayer of a mother in mourning to St. Stephen. I am very 
fearful that they would pronounce her to be outrageously idola- 
trous. But St. Augustin, who mentions the circumstance, does 
not think of finding any fault with the woman, as if she knew 
not to whom it belonged, to restore her son and hear the inter- 
cession of his martyr. Let us not be more fastidious : let us be 
less captious about the words, and attend more to their evident 
purport. Your Protestant countrymen would do well to attend 
to the sense and assume the language of antiquity, instead of 
squeamishly affecting a grammatical exactness, and harping upon 
expressions the sense of which is evident to every one. For the 4 
rest: if any of our divines pushed on by blind zeal, have per- 

i Oral. XXX VI. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 479 

milted themselves to proceed to such lengths as to attribute to 
the saints the power and efficacy belonging to Jesus Christ alone, 
know that we do not vindicate any such excess, and that it would 
be unjust to render the Catholic body responsible for the exag- 
gerations of misguided individuals. 

In order to ascertain our doctrine and be thoroughly convinced 
of the essential difference we make between the intercession of 
the saints and the mediation of our Saviour, read the definition 
of the council of Trent. 1 Were it not rather long, I would tran- 
scribe it for you, so admirable do I consider it, and so well adapted 
to satisfy the most fastidious dispositions. Read our catechisms, 
our books of liturgies and our litanies, in which is so distinctly 
marked the difference between the prayers made to God and those 
made to the saints. To the saints it is always, "Pray for us, 
intercede for us:" to the persons of the Trinity, "Have mercy 
on us, hear us ; Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the 
world ; spare us, have mercy on us." Again, cast a glance upon 
our Coxfiteor, a prayer so familiar to all Catholics, and in which, 
after having confessed our faults to God, the angels, the saints 
and our brethren present, in order to humble ourselves before 
God and all his creatures in heaven and on earth, we continue : 
"I beseech thee blessed Mary ever virgin, the blessed Michael 
the archangel, the blessed John the baptist, the holy apostles 
Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you, my brethren, to 
pray to the Lord our God for me." You may observe that we 
do not say any thing more to our brethren in heaven than to our 
brethren on earth. There is not a prayer or collect in our liturgy 
but which concludes with this general form by which the divinity 
of our Saviour is loudly proclaimed : ' ' Through Jesus Christ, 
tliy only Son, our Lord who liveth and reigneth with thee and 
the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end." Who does not 
see, by this solemn conclusion of all our prayers, that we hope 
for the success and the fruit of our prayers solely through the 
merits of our Saviour, and the intercession of his name, the only 
Dame under heaven given to man, whereby he may be saved. 
1 Session x.w. 



480 ON THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

After this simple and incontestable exposition, shall there be 
any one found henceforth so unjust, so full of effrontery, as to 
tax us with turning the saints into demigods, and re-introducing 
idolatry into Christianity ! Those only are idolaters who pay to 
the creature the honor and worship due to God. So far is our 
invocation from presenting any thing of the kind, that it fixes 
them their station in such a manner as that it would be impious 
and blasphemous to address Jesus Christ as we address them, or 
to address them as we address Christ, — "Neither we, nor the 
ancients, nor any truly pious Christian have ever besought Christ 
to pray to the Father for us." 

From whom do you think I have borrowed these words? 
From a celebrated minister 1 among the Calvinists of France. 
He spoke true : never has such a prayer proceeded from a truly 
Christian mouth ; it would be an impiety, a blasphemy. The 
same minister continues to explain with antiquity and the Catho- 
lic Church the dignity of the meditation of Christ. "Eternal 
Father," says he, " Jesus Christ is the Lord and dispenser of all 
the graces which his blood has merited for us. This powerful 
king of the universe dispenses them as he pleases. His subjects 
do not look upon him as a mere intercessor, but as their king, 
their Lord and Cod, and they pray that what they ask may be 
granted to them by his will and his power." Yes, and we have 
also said and shall ever say that Jesus Christ is the dispenser 
and distributor of all his graces ; that he disposes of them as he 
pleases, and gives them with the authority of a lord and master ; 
for they are his own, being acquired and purchased by the price 
of his blood. His prayer is in him but a perpetual will and de- 
sire to sanctify us ; his all-powerful intercession is found in the 
eternal virtue of his sacrifice, in the presence of that sacred 
body which has been our victim, and in that humanity which 
being once assumed he retains for ever. To intercede, it suffices, 
says the apostle, that he should appear for us before God. But 
the saints are but rnere intercessors, who have every thing to ask 
for, and nothing to give. If they employ themselves in our fa- 
' Daille. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 481 

vor, it is never in their own name, but in the name of Christ, 
always through him, through his blood and merits. They inter- 
cede as servants, who are in favor with their master, but yet who 
are nothing but servants : like friends happy and crowned, yet 
happy through his merits, crowned through his kindness, indebted 
for their happiness to his graces ; in fine as impotent and humble 
creatures before him, with the words and in the attitude of sup- 
pliants. Is it not therefore as clear as the day that this doctrine 
places the saints at an infinite distance below Jesus Christ ; that 
it places them in heaven in the same rank of inferiority and de- 
pendence that they occupied upon earth, and leave them eternally 
in the order of creatures, employed in offering to their divine 
Redeemer immortal acts of thanksgiving for the happiness they 
possess by his bounty, and in ardent supplications that he would 
vouchsafe to make us partakers with them of eternal glory. 
Who would imagine that a belief, so visibly repugnant to idolatry, 
should ever have been set down for idolatrous ? They who have 
thus characterized our belief in this particular must either have 
disdained to learn it correctly, or, if they ever understood it, 
they must have done much worse — they must designedly and 
malignantly have misrepresented it. "If the Roman Church is 
idolatrous," they have said, "our separation is not a schism." 
And actually they have represented it to be idolatrous. But 
what have they gained by so doing ? So far from justifying their 
schism, they have added to the weight of their offences before 
God and impartial men ; for to this last crime the most unpar- 
donable of all, they have added that of calumny. 

This calumny is much more audacious and detestable than 
might at iirsi right appear, inasmuch as it applies also to the 
primitive Church, from which we receive the invocation of saints ; 
so that, if this practice be idolatrous, the source and the crime 
would be derived to us from those golden ages, of which your 
reformers pretended to !»• the admirers and imitators. St. Irc- 
ti.mmi.- shews us in tin' B. Virgin the advocate of tin' human race, 
by teaching in what manner Bhe became the advocate of the 
mother of all mankind: In' opposes the disobedience of Eve to 
41 



482 ON TIIK CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

the obedience of Mary: As Eve was seduced to fly from God, so 
was the Virgin Mary induced to obey him, that she might be- 
come the advocate of her that had fallen.'" 

"I will fall down on my knees," exclaimed Origen, 2 "and not 
presuming, on account of my crimes, to present my prayer to 
God, I will invoke all the saints to my assistance. ye saints 
of heaven, I beseech you with a sorrow full of sighs and tears; 
fall at the feet of the Lord of Mercies for me a miserable sinner." 
I find again this beautiful invocation of his to holy Job: 3 "Pray 
for us unfortunate creatures, that the mercy of the terrible God 
may deign to protect us in all our tribulations, and in the midst 
of the snares spread by our enemy." 

" Plato observes," says Eusebius of Csesarea, 4 "that they who 
nobly die in battle, shall be venerated as heroes, and their monu- 
ments be renowned. How does this apply to the deaths of those 
friends of God, who are justly called the soldiers of genuine 
piety ! For it is our practice to honor their sepulchre, there to 
utter our prayers and our vows, and to venerate their blessed 
souls; and this we say is justly done." 

"Hear now, daughter of David! incline thine ear to our 

prayers We raise our cry to thee, llemember us, most 

holy virgin! and for the feeble eulogiums we give thee, give us 
some share in thy precious riches and thy treasure of graces, 

thou who art full of grace Hail, Mary, full of grace, the 

Lord is with thee. Queen and mother of God, intercede for us." 4 
The conclusion of this ancient invocation reminds us of our an- 
gelical salutation, the first part of which consists of the words of 
the angel and of St. Elizabeth in the Gospel, and the latter part, 
of the prayer added by the Church. Whole pages would be ne- 
cessary were I to transcribe the invocations to the B. Virgin, 
which are found in St. Basil, in St. Ephrem particularly, and 
St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose and 
St. Augustin. St. Epiphanius 6 sa^s with accuracy and preci- 
sion : "Let Mary therefore be honored; but the Father, Son 

> Advers. Hares. L. V. C. XIX. * On the Lamentations. 3 B. II. on .I..l>. 
4 Prepar. Evang. L. XIII. C. XL 'St. Athanasius on the Gospel. ''Adv. Colly- 
ridianoa Hser. LIX. she LXX1X. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 483 

and Holy Ghost alone be adored." And St. Gregory the Great 
is not less exact in this short prayer: " Saviour of the world, 
save us : holy mother of God, Virgin Mary, pray for us." 

To proceed from the invocation of Mary to that of the saints, 
hear in what terms our ancestors addressed them: "And you, 
happy creatures, glorious martyrs, assist me by your prayers, 

that I may find mercy in the day of judgment Being touched 

at my misery, assist me before the throne of the Divine Majesty, 
that through your prayers I may obtain the grace of salvation, 
and become partaker with you of eternal beatitude." l 

"We stand in need of many graces," says St. Gregory, of 
Nyssa, to the martyr Theodorus, " intercede for your country 
before our common master and sovereign. We are apprehensive 
of great miseries and of the utmost perils. The cruel Scythian 
approaches and threatens war. soldier, fight for us : martyr, 
speak boldly for us your countrymen. Although you be raised 
above the world, you always know the crosses, afflictions and ne- 
cessities of our human condition. Ask peace for us, that our 
sacred assemblies may not be interrupted, that the the barbarian, 
in his fury, may not turn against the temples and altars, and 
trample under his sacrilegious feet their sacred appurtenances. 
We acknowledge that we are indebted to you for our preserva- 
ti'>n till this time : continue for the time to come your protection 
and defence. And if a host of pikers be necessary, assemble 
the choirs of your brother martyrs, and supplicate altogether for 
us. The united voices of so many just will cover the sins of the 
people. Admonish Peter, solicit Paul, call John, the beloved 
disciple: and let them intercede for the Churches which they 
themselves have founded." 

St. Gregory of Nazianzum, besought St. Cyprian, St. Athana- 
ind St. Basil, "to'look down from on high upon him, to 
govern his conversation and his life, to assist him in feeding his 
flock, to give him a mure perfect knowledge of the Trinity, in 
fine to draw him to where fchcj were, and to place him among 
them and the other blessed saints." 9 

'St. ESphrem, oath* Martyr*, *Paneg. of S. S. Cyprian, Athan. and Basil. 



484 OX THE CHURCH OF BSTGLAHD 

St. Asterius, disciple of St. Chrysostom, introduces into his 
discourse one of the faithful addressing Phocas the martyr, in 
these words. 1 "You who have suffered for Jesus Christ, pray 
for our sufferings and our maladies. You have yourself prayed 
to the martyrs, before your own martyrdom ; then you found 
what you sought : now that you possess, give to us." 

" Where then is the tomb of Alexander the Great?" 2 said 
the elocpuent patriarch of Constantinople. "Tell me, if you 
can, the day of his death. But the tombs of the servants of 
Jesus Christ are illustrious in the city which is the mistress of 
the world ; the days of their deaths are known to us all, and are 

become festival days throughout the world The tombs of the 

servants of Him that was crucified are more magnificent than 
the palaces of kings, not so much by the beauty of their struc- 
ture, though that is not wanting, as by the concourse of the 
people. For even he who wears purple comes to embrace these 
tombs, and laying aside his pageantry and pomp, standing, prays 
to the saints to assist him by their prayers. He who wears the 
diadem, chooses a fisherman and a maker of tents, even after 
their deaths, for his patrons. Will you say that Jesus Christ is 
dead, he whose servants, even after their decease, are the patrons 
and protectors of the kings of the earth '? Let us go frequently," 
says he in another place, " to visit the holy martyrs ; let us touch 
their shrines ; let us embrace with faith their holy relics, in order 
to draw down some blessings upon us. For as brave soldiers, 
shewing to kings the wounds they have received in his service, 
speak to him with confidence ; so likewise do they, shewing their 
dissevered heads, obtain all that they desire from the King of 
heaven." 

The great bishop of Milan testifies by his example and his in- 
strutions the advantages procured by having recourse to the saints : 
"And, that my prayer may become more efficacious, I invoke, 
the suffrage of the blessed Virgin Mary I implore the inter- 
cession of the apostles the assistance of the martyrs the 

supplications of the confessors." 3 — Let us supplicate the " angels 
who have been given to us for our guardians," says he elsewhere, 

'Horn, on Phocas. *Hom. XXVI. on II. Cor. :) Preparation on death. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 485 

"let us supplicate the martyrs, who can intercede for our sins, 
who in their own blood have washed the sins they might have 
committed. For they are the martyrs of God ; they preside over 
us, inspect our life and observe our conduct. Blush not to admit 
them as the intercessors of our infirmity, who during the days 
of their trial and triumph experienced the infirmity of the flesh." 1 

• " This passage," said a Protestant, 2 " is very hard, too hard 
indeed to be explained. " Are the preceding ones less so ? What 
do you think of the following epitaph? "Farewell, Paul, 
support by thy prayers the extreme old age of thy admirer. 
Faith and works have united thee to God ; being present, thou 
wilt more easily obtain of him, whatever thou shalt petition for." 3 

St. Augustin 4 bears testimony that it was customary with the 
Christians to say humbly to each of the saints: "Remember 
me." Who ever invoked their intercession with more devotion 
than himself? " Holy and immaculate V. Mary, mother of God, 
our Saviour Jesus Christ, deign to intercede in my behalf before 
him whose temple thou hast deserved to be. Celestials choirs 
of angels, arch-angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, 
martyrs, confessors, priests, levites, monks, virgins and all the 
just ! by him who has elected you, and the contemplation of whom 
forms your felicity, I entreat you to supplicate the Lord for me, 
a miserable sinner, that I may escape the rage of the devil and 
death eternal." 5 Then immediately addressing his prayer to God, 
he savs: "0 my God, vouchsafe to grant me life eternal, ac- 
cording to thy clemency and thy all-merciful bounty." 

Before all these great prelates, St. Basil taught the interces- 
sion of -aims : " He who is oppressed by care, flies to their aid, 
ae does he that prospers: the first, to seek deliverance; the 
second, that his good fortune may continue. The pious mother 
is found praying for her children: and the wife for the return 
ami health of her husband. ye guardians of the human race ! 
ye powerful messengers before Cod! Let us join our prayers 
wit!: yours." 

i i!. ; ..k On Widows. * Crocius. Cantrov. 7. * St. Jerome, Ep. XXVII. 4 '',Vy 
of Owl, I!. NX I. eh. X\'\ II. ' tte&it. eft XL. 
41« 



486 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

In the small number of isolated testimonies that you have just 
read, you have heard the most celebrated doctors of Italy, Africa, 
Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Asia. I sball now shew you all the 
bishops of the world united in the same sentiments, and you will 
at once become acquainted with the belief and practice of the 
universal Church. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, who also 
presided over the council of Nice, preached the word before that 
venerable assembly on the feast of St. John. What then is he, 
I ask, who entered into the world? and in what manner was he 
introduced? Open to us this mystery, evangelist ! Tell us, 
blessed apostle, something grand and sublime : you who were 
called the son of thunder : you who by a transcendant doctrine 

have filled the whole world with admiration see this assembly, 

this multitude of pastors assembled for you. Remove for us the 

stone uncover the well of life, enable us to draw from it after 

your example, or rather conduct us, to your own spring." 

And the whole council of Chalcedon, after hearing read the 
letter of Flavian, unanimously exclaimed ; " That is the truth : 
we all say the same: may Flavian's memory be immortal.... Fla- 
vian lives after his death. May the martyr pray for us!" 

Permit me now to address those of the reformed religion who 
so bitterly condemn our invocation. Of all the Fathers whose 
particular testimonies I have adduced, there is not a single one, 
I will say to them, whose talents, virtues and apostolic labors 
you would not admire ; not one whose sanctity, crowned in hea- 
ven, you would not unite with us in admitting. The most head- 
strong and impetuous of your ministers have never refused to 
number among the saints an Augustin, an Ambrose, a Jerome, 
a Chrysostom, a Gregory Nazianzum, a Gregory of Nyssa, a 
Basil, an Athanasius, &c. All these great men have invoked 
the saints, have exhorted the faithful of their time to pray to 
them, and to this day instruct us to pray to them. It is not true 
therefore that this practice is of so pernicious a character as you 
have been pleased to represent with no little acrimony and vio- 
lence. Either expel from heaven all those illustrious doctors of 
the Church, or cease to calumniate their doctrine and conduct. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 487 

If they were idolaters, they could not be saints: if they are 
saints, they were not idolaters. 

On a solemn occasion, in presence of two hundred bishops 
and a multitude of doctors assembled at Ephesus, the patriarch 
of Alexandria publicly invokes the assistance of the apostles ; 
and not a single reclamation is heard. What is still more — at 
Chalcedon more than six hundred bishops cried out with one 
voice : " May the Martyr Flavian pray for us !" If you reason 
justly upon the invocation of saints, the whole council consisted 
of so many idolaters ; not one of the six hundred bishops will be 
saved. But who would not reject with horror so monstrous an 
idea ? Who could endure that these modern sophists should dare 
to raise their voice for the purpose of stigmatizing with idolatry 
their own judges, the judges of doctrine, who were assembled in 
an oecumenical council, applauded by the universal Church and 
the uninterrupted adherence of so many centuries. The Fathers 
of Chalcedon, bordering upon the primitive times, and inheriters 
of tradition then recent, had formed their belief and practice upon 
the doctrine of the Church, on facts and writings which have 
not reached us. And fourteen centuries later, when the monu- 
ments, which they had, are not within your reach, you pretend 
to know more than they did respecting the first age of Christianity, 
and presume to treat their worship and doctrine as a novelty, a 
corruption, and idolatry ! But whom will you persuade to believe 
this? Is there a single man of sense who will balance a moment 
between so ancient an authority and these upstarts, infected with 
the declamations of the sixteenth century? And after all, these 
declamations were not even then new : they were nothing more 
than the old rhapsodies, which, after causing some noise a little 
before tin' council of Chalcedon, were universally proscribed, and 
would have since remained in (he same oblivious silence in which 
they were before, had not your reformers shewn less prudence 
than eagerness to stir them up again. 

As for as resting upon all the monuments of antiquity, we 
confidently conclude from them that, in the fourth and fifth ages, 
all the Churches of the world were in the habit of invoking the 



488 ON THE CHURCn OF ENGLAND 

f-ainfs: lliat this universal practice, the origin of which cannot 
be fixed, must go back to the most distant times ; that the primi- 
tive Church could not have observed it, without believing that 
the saints in heaven hear our prayers, that they intercede for us 
before God, and that it is profitable to invoke their intercession. 
I add, that you are compelled to adopt these conclusions, if 
you wish not to be convicted, in the eyes of the world, of the 
most palpable inconsequences. In fact, you tell us, with your 
Reformers of a century or two back, that you attach yourselves 
exclusively to the belief and worship of the primitive Church, in 
laying aside what you accuse us of having added. Now she in- 
voked the saints, as you cannot doubt; invoke them, therefore, 
with her. You, say again, with your pretended Reformers, that 
you glory in admitting the four first general councils: " These 
ancient synods of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, 
and other such, assembled to combat errors, we williugly em- 
brace," said Calvin; 1 "we venerate them as holy and sacred in 
every thing relating to the dogmas of faith." And this same 
Calvin calls the times, which include these four councils, the 
golden ages. 2 Believe, therefore, as Christians believed in those 

•B. IV. de. Instit., ch. IX. 

- The Lutherans sometimes boast of admitting the authority of these ancient 
councils, and of attaching themselves to the authorit}- of the primitive Church. 
The solemn act of their profession of faith * runs thus: " We do not despise the 
consent of the Catholic Church, we wish not to support the seditious and impious 
opinions, which she has condemned ; but it is the authority of the word of God 
and of the ancient Church, that has driven us to embrace this doctrine, for the 
greater glory of God, and the advantage of the well-disposed in the universal 
Church." And in the Apology, after the article of justification, it is said that 
" it was the doctrine of the prophets and the apostles of holy Fathers St. Am- 
brose and St. Augustin, of the greater part of the other Fathers, and of the 
whole Church, which considered Jesus Christ as a propitiator, and the author of 
justification; and that we must not take for the doctrine of the Roman Church 
all that is approved by the pope, some cardinals, bishops, theologians, or manks." 
Here is a distinction made between particular opinions and a dogma universally 
received, which they profess to leave unmolested. 

There exists a letter against the modern Arians, written in the name of the 
pastors and professors of Geneva, to prince Nicholas Radzivil, Grand Mareschal 
of Lithuania. Beza,t who wrote the letter, expresses himself thus : " Well 

• Confess, of Augsb. art. 21. t Opuse. Bez. page J1U. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 489 

happy times; pray as they prayed in that golden age. Join, 
therefore, your voices to those of the Fathers of Chaleedon, and 
say with them : May the martyr Flavian pray for us ! But to 
announce that you adhere solely to the worship and belief of the 
primitive Church, and at the same time to condemn, as a rem- 
nant of paganism, a part of her belief and worship ; to boast of 
adhering to the four first general councils, and to represent as 
idolaters the six hundred bishops of Chaleedon ; to call a golden 
age the period, in which you maintain that abomination was 
reigning in the temple, to transport to heaven and rank among 
• the saints the very persons whom you mention as having been 
the first to give the people by their example and doctrine, lessons 
of idolatry ; this evidently shews that you know not how to be 
consistent either with yourselves or with the primitive Church ; 
it is at once admiring and opposing, admitting and rejecting, it 
is wandering and losing yourselves in a labyrinth of inconse- 
quences. Heaven no doubt has permitted that the Reformers 
should fall into these striking contradictions, in order that those, 
who, in after times, should candidly examine their doctrine, 
might be able more easily to discover its erroneousness, and re- 
turn with more eagerness and confidence to the ancient, and ne- 
GeBSazdly invariable doctrine of the Catholic Church. 

But, in confining ourselves to our question, I propose yet 
farther to shew you the Reformation divided in itself, teaching 
by turns contradictory doctrines, the leaders and their disciples 
sometimes at war with each other, and more frequently among 
themselves ; some defending our belief and practice from the 
then ! let them prove to us clearly that dogma, which they discovered in Philippo 
Severus, Damian, and other monsters of fatal memory; ami, if they can, let 
them demonstrate it either by reason, or by Scripture, or bj the consent of the 
Fathers and of the ancient Chnrch. Por onr part, we aca pt this condition, and 
if we '1" not make their blasphemies more manifest than the mid-day sun, we will 
then content <<> it, illustrious prince, and you may consider as a< false prophets.'?' 

And a little lower " W oat man of sense could they wish to persuade 

that A.ugustin ever taught respecting the Trinity otherwise than the African 
Churches, and these latter otherwise than the universal Church?" They who 
thus appeal to the authority of tic- Fathers ami the ancient Church an- evidently 
obliged, from their ot d principles, to admil it- doctrine, an. I, to keep to our sub- 
ject, to invoke the aiinta with ^ugustin, the African Churches, and all antiquity. 



490 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

violent attacks made upon it by the others. Luther was bold 
enough to say in a low and frivolous style : ' "As for me, I would 
not give a farthing for all the merits of Peter. Of what ser- 
vice would they be to me, since they have been of none to him- 
self?" He says also 2 "Paul affects, it seems to me, from con- 
tempt to the mother of God, to call her but woman I cannot 

endure to hear it said to Mary : My hope and my life." But the 
same Luther says elsewhere: 3 "The saints can do all things, 
and through them God will grant you as much as you believe 

that you shall receive from them I have never denied 4 that 

we were assisted by the merits and prayers of the saints as 

some miserable wretches have maliciously endeavored to impute 
to me." 

"By the fact alone of Mary becoming the mother of God, 
she has been loaded with admirable gifts, surpassing all compre- 
hension. What makes her glory and her happiness, is that one 
single person of the human race is raised above all others, that 
she has no equal, and that she has for Son, Him who was already 
the Son of the heavenly Father." 5 

G^colampadius has written : 6 " The veneration for Mary is 
nothing less than a worship of idols." Who would believe that 
this same man has panegyrised Mary in the following lofty 
strains : "I would not wish the least part to be taken away from 

the worship of Mary God forbid that I should ever be heard 

to express any indifference to her, I, who regard it as a certain 
sign of reprobation, not to shew her the affection which is due 
to her. How should I not love her, whom God has loved, who 
has given a Saviour to the world, her whom the angels and the 
archangels venerate, who is become the advocate of the human 
race, and who is called the cuieen of mercies? divine clemency ! 
O the immense bounty of God, who has given so holy a mother 
to his Son, and to us a protectress so powerful in all things !" 

Zuinglius wrote 7 "I know that I have provoked against me 

1 In postilla majori, Doni. a Trinit. sept. 2 On Ep. to Galat. ch. IV. a On the 
six precepts, ch. V. 4 Reply to the theol. ofLouvain. 5 On the Nativ. of Mary. 
6 Disc, on all the saints. 7 Art. 20. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 491 

the hatred of certain persons, because I attributed less than 
others to the intercession of the saints, and because I have ever 
been the first to reject it." Let the curate of Zurich hear the 
doctor of Wittemburg ' and become instructed in his school : 
"On the intercession of the saints, I think with all the Christian 
Church, and I am of opinion that the saints are to be honored 
and invoked by us. Who could contradict the wonderful prodi- 
gies that God works, still in our days, at their tombs ? I have 
said, I confess, that it was not worthy a Christian to ask their 
intercession for the interests of this world, rather than for those 
of heaven : they must therefore, be invoked in such a manner 
that the Lord may be invoked by them." 

Melancthon, although in general less violent and oftentimes 
pacific, went so far as to say: 8 "The invocation of the dead, as 
it is practised in the invocation of the saints, is a manifest idol- 
omania." The master is now going to correct the disciple. 3 
"It has never been my opinion," says Luther to him, "that the 
invocations made to the saints were blameworthy, even for tem- 
poral things, that savors of the heresy of our Bohemians." 
And again: "Let the sick man at the article of death, cease not 
to invoke the blessed Virgin, the angels, his apostle, and all the 
saints, that they would intercede for him before the Lord." 

Calvin, 4 enumerating the motives which obliged his followers 
to separate from the Catholics, puts in the first place the invoca- 
tion of saints, adding that they could not unite with us in a re- 
ligioua assembly, without being defiled with our idolatry. But 
Calvin also had his slumbering moments: he forgot in his fourth 
book what he had written in the first, viz. that "during five 
hundred years religion had flourished in the purity of the true 
doctrine." The invocation at that time, therefore, had nothing 
idolatrous aboul it. And what is still mors striking, in this 
very fourth book, ho repeats that, "it is beyond all doubt and 
dispute that, from Jesus Christ to the times of the holy doctors 
(he here comprises St. Augustin) nothing had been changed iu 

1 Con-pction of some articles by Lather. "Opposition between the true and 
the pontifical doctrine. »Letl ir to Geo. Bpalathj, *L. IV. De Inst. c. 21. 



492 ON THE CHURCH OF EXULAXD 

point of doctrine." Therefore, the invocation practised by these 
holy doctors, and since them by us, after their example, is traced 
back to the apostles themselves, according to the doctor of 
Geneva. 

Calvin sometimes treats the saints with the utmost contempt, 
not blushing to call them shades, phantoms, manes, rotton car- 
casses, &c. Sometimes in a style of low buffoonery, which he 
no doubt thinks good taste, he admires our simplicity in believ- 
ing that the saints have ears long enough to reach us. 

But Luther who was quite equal to him, could have taught 
him to speak more becomingly, and think more correctly upon 
this subject. 1 "Some one," says he, might ask here, of what 
use the saints will be to us. " Make the same use of them that 
you do of your neighbor. You say to him ; Pray to God for 
me; say to them: St. Peter, pray for me. You do not sin by 
asking them to pray for you, neither do you sin by not asking 
them." 

Theodore Beza, friend of the patriarch of Geneva, was no 
friend to the saints: according to him, "the invocation of de- 
parted saints is not only a vain and foolish practice ; it is even 
absolutely impious." But at Bale, fficolampadius did not hear 
this invocation treated so shamefully. " I would not deny," 
says he, "that the saints pray for us; neither would I assert 
that it is an impiety and an idolatry to implore their protection. 
The saints are enflamed with charity in heaven, they cease not 
to pray for us. What harm, therefore, is there in asking them 
to do that which we believe to be agreeable to God, although he 

has never commanded us to do so? It is what has been done 

by Chrysostom, and by Gregory of Nazianzum in his panegyric 
on St. Cyprian; and what has been practised by almost all the 
Churches of the East and the West." 2 Bucer and Camerarius 
speak with the same moderation and appear, if any thing, rather 
inolined towards the invocation. 

The greater part of the reformed Calvanists put the invocation 

'Sermon on the feast of St. John the Baptist. s Xote on Horn, of St. John 
Chrvsos. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 493 

of saints among the number of fundamental errors ; but some of 
them, more tractable, will not have them to be such; amongst 
others Peter Martyr, Zanchius, and Molinaeus. 

The confession of Augsburg says: "The invocation of the 
saints who are dead is a practice that must absolutely be ban- 
ished from the Church : and we are of opinion that it should be 
abolished." However, the patriarch of the Lutherans, as we 
have seen, has himself justified, approved, and even recom- 
mended this practice; (Ecolampadius, Bueer and others have 
said almost as much in favor of it; and among the modern Lu- 
therans we can cite one, 1 who has done great credit to the whole 
party by his learning and his virtues. "As for the invocation 
of saints" says he, "the danger that Protestants imagine they 
discover in it, will cpuickly vanish, provided that they of the 
Roman Church declare, that they pretend not to ask the saints, 
who are with God, to pray for them, in any other sense or with 
any other intention than they ask the saints who are upon the 
earth; and that in whatever terms this prayer is conceived, it is 
always understood in the way of intercession; that thus the 
words : Holy Mary, deliver me at the hour of death, signify. 
Holy Mary, intercede for me with your Son, that he would de- 
liver me at the hour of death." Now this is a declaration that 
we have often made, and that we still make, and we repeat it af- 
ter and with the council of Trent. 

The Confession of faith of the Remonstrants or Arminians 
absolutely rejects the invocation of saints, if not as savoring of 
idolatry, at least as futile and vainly imagined. But Grotius, 
who for a long time supported the Arminians by his writings 
and his credit in Holland, and who, from his attachment to that 
party, lost Lis liberty at the time when his friend Barneveld lost 
hi- lite for tlir Bame cause: Grotius, after having more deliber- 
ately examined the principles of the Reformation ami those of 
the Church, not only abandoned the prejudices of the Arminians 
against the invocation, but himself defended ami proved it by 
the same arguments that we draw from Scripture ami Tradition, 

1 If. Molanus, CEuv. posth. de D issuet, torn. I. p. 67. 
42 



494 ON TITE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

and ho concludes in these words : "After what I have just said, 
I imagine that every reader, not carried away by his prejudices, 
will see that it is much more reasonable to believe that the 
martyrs obtain some knowledge of our affairs, than to think that 
they obtain none." 1 

In fine the confession of faith of the Anglican Church 2 puts 
the invocation of saints in the number of what it calls "fond 
things vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scrip- 
ture, but rather repugnant to the word of God." 

There have, however, been able English theologians, who have 
thought it necessary to adopt other ideas about the invocation of 
saints, at a time when this question was better cleared up and 
understood than in the year 1552. I shall content myself with 
producing the testimony of one of your most distinguished pre- 
lates, 3 who had made the question the subject of particular and 
deep investigation. " I do not deny, but the saints are media- 
tors, as they are called, of prayer and intercession, but in gene- 
ral, and for all in general. They interpose with God by their 
supplications, and mediate by their prayers." And in a treatise 4 
expressly composed upon this subject, the doctor admits that the 
blessed in heaven do recommend to God, in their prayers, their 
kindred, friends, and acquaintance on earth. And having given 
his reason for this declaration : ' ' This is the common voice with 
general concurrence, without contradiction of reverend and 
learned antiquity, for ought I could ever read, or understand; 
and I see no cause or reason to dissent from them, touching in- 
tercession in this kind Indeed, I grant, Christ is not wronged 

in his mediations; 5 it is no impiety to say, as they (of the Ro- 
man Church) do; Holy Mary, pray for me: holy Peter pray for 

me Could I come at them, 6 or certainly inform them of my 

state, without any question, or more ado, I would readily and 
willingly say, Holy Peter, blessed Paul, pray for me, recommend 
my case unto Jesus Christ our Lord. Were they with me, by 

1 Votuni pro pace. 2 Art. 22. 3 Dr. Montague, bishop of Chichester and Nor- 
wich, Antidote, p. 20. 4 Treat. Invoc. of Saints, p. 103. * Treat. Invoc. of 
Saints, p. 118. « Ibid. p. 119. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 495 

me, in my kenning, I would run with my open arms, and gon- 
upetein, fall upon my knees, and with affection desire them to 

pray for me I see no absurdity in nature, 1 no incongruity 

unto analogy of faith, no repugnancy at all to sacred Scripture, 
much less impiety, for any man to say, holy angel guardian, 
pray for me." Behold here our invocation taught, with but a 
trifling difference, by the learned bishop of Norwich. He only 
hesitates at one point; he sees not how the saints hear us ; if he 
were sure of being heard he would not hesitate a moment to 
invoke them. But we can have, in fact we have this certainty, 
without knowing the manner how our invocatien reaches the 
saints. This knowledge is reserved for the other world. The 
possibility is all that we are given to understand in this. St. 
Augustin 2 felt the difficulty of Dr. Montague ; but he was not, 
like him, discouraged by it. He did not conceive how the saints 
heard and assisted us, and yet he equally believed that they did 
both. The bishop of Norwich did not doubt, neither do Pro- 
testants in general doubt that the angels are informed of all that 
concerns us, and hear our prayers, although certainly they know 
not the manner how this is done. "We have only, therefore, to 
raise the saints to an equality with the angels. Now we have 
the positive assurance that the saints are like unto them ; and St. 
John describes them to us in heaven as sharing the functions, 
the joy, the triumphs, and the knowledge of the angels. 

You have just seen the Protestants divided among themselves 
respecting the invocation of saints: some treating it as folly, im- 
piety and idolatry; others finding in it nothing of the kind, but 
on the contrary approving of it, and going so far as to exhort 
the people to the practice of it. Supposing that it were neces- 
sary now to decide the question upon the simple authority of one 
or other of these two parties, which of the two should, in your 
opinion, carry the day? It is plain that they had, none of them, 
any desire to spare the Catholic Church, that fchey had rather a 
common entered in discovering its errors and defects, and ex- 
posing them in the mosl public mi a*. If is plain that they 

'Ibid. p. VI. *LibdeCur. prottort. 0. X.wi. 



496 ON THE CIHKCII of BaroLAns 

could not have split upon the invocation of saints, and abandoned 
one another in favor of the Church, but from a personal convic- 
tion and the irresistible power of argument. It alone could 
make them surmount their repugnance to justify our belief, and 
their aversion to the article which their sehismatieal brethren 
gave out as the decisive reason of their separation. Nothing, 
therefore, but the solidity of proofs could have compelled them 
to renounce so important an advantage, and to give us the advan- 
tage over Protestants themselves. The others on the contrary, 
pushed on by a keener animosity, have discovered in us, or 
imagined for us, errors and defects which we have not. They 
have said: Our separation is not a schism, if Catholics are 
idolaters. By charging us with this crime, they exculpated 
themselves from the greatest crime we had to lay to their charge. 
Their anxiety to find us idolaters caused them to maintain that 
we were so, and that our means of defence did not clear us from 
the charge. Thus to form against us, and obstinately to main- 
tain, this imputation of idolatry, they only had to yield them- 
selves to the inclinations of their heart, and to consult the inter- 
ests of their cause ; whereas the former, in order to justify us, 
had their prejudices to subdue ; and their unwillingness to be of 
service to their adversaries to overcome. The agreement of 
these latter with Catholics is, therefore, a decisive proof in favor 
of the invocation of saints, and the opposition of the other can 
be no argument against it. 

To conclude, it is manifest that the invocation of saints sup- 
poses their intercession. For if they were indifferent about us, 
it would be quite useless to pray to them. Their intercession, 
considered in itself, does not necessarily suppose our invocation ; 
but it invites and encourages us to invoke them. When once 
we know that, secure of their own salvation, the saints are ten- 
derly solicitous for ours; that they are solicitous to see us shar- 
ing their happiness, and exert themselves to draw us to them by 

their prayers, it is but just to shew our gratitude for such g 1 

wishes and services; it is natural to wish and request them still 
to favor us with the succor of their prayers because we cannot 



AND THE REFOKMATION IN GENERAL. 49 7 

doubt that they are of more value than ours, and that we ought 
to feel more confident of obtaining the graces of the sovereign 
Master, when those graces are solicited for us by the saints 
reigning with him. 

That the saints intercede for us before God, is a dogma of 
revelation positively taught by the council of Trent, supposed in 
the second council of Nice, established on the Old and New 
Testaments, proved by the unanimous doctrine of the Fathers, 
and above all by the uniformity of the liturgies whether orthodox 
or schismatical of the fifth century. The greater part of Protest- 
ants, particularly the Lutherans, make no difficulty in admitting 
it. 1 But faith does not oblige us to believe that it is absolutely 
necessary to invoke the saints. The council of Trent does not 
teach that it is necessary, but simply that it is good and useful to 
invoke them. It does not impose upon us a general precept to 
invoke them ; it confines itself to inculcate to us its utility. He 
who, acknowledging it in theory, should not take advantage of 
it in practice, would act unwisely for his own interest, but would 
not be a heretic. 

This ancient and salutary custom of having recourse to the 
prayers of the blessed in heaven should greatly enlarge your 
ideas on the article of the creed, which you have often repeated, 
without ever perceiving its magnificence or extent; I mean the 
communion of saints. Hitherto, you have conceived this com- 
munion to be confined to our globe and its inhabitants, and again 
among its inhabitants to the small number of those, whose prayers 
you conceive may be of advantage to you. Form now more 
exalted ideas; leave the narrow limits of this world; the com- 
munion of saints knows no such confinement, it reaches to infinity, 
even to the throne of the Creator. It joins heaven to earth by 
the religious communication it keeps up between the inhabitants 

'The Apology of the Confession of AugBburg says: "We .ornnt that the saints 
pray in heaven for the Church in general." The Saxon Confession says : "There 
in no doubt that the saints pray for the Church i yef it does nol follow that they 
are to be invoked." The Confession of Wittemberg says : " As the angels solicit 
for us, so likewise do the saints praj for Ihe Church."— ChemnitiuB, Exam; of 
Council of Trent, p. 3. 
42 



498 OX THE CHURCH OF EXULAND 

of both, between those who live in glory and eternal beatitude, 
and us mortals who linger on through this obscure and transitory 
existence. It opens to your view the Heavenly Jerusalem, and 
represents the innumerable multitude of the angels and saints, 
and above them all, the first of creatures, the virgin Mary, 
mother of God, contemplating unveiled the objects of our faith, 
enjoying the objects of our hope, all united in charity, which 
inflames them with a love for God, and a mutual affection for 
each other, a love and affection that overflows in desires, wishes 
and supplications for our welfare. On the other hand, it shews 
you, in this world, weak and miserable sinners, confounded at 
their past transgressions, alarmed at the relapses that threaten 
them, mistrusting themselves and their acceptance with God, 
addressing themselves to his elect and friends, and requesting 
their support and assistance, by the union of their prayers and 
fraternal intercession. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 499 

LETTER XV. 

Respect paid to Relics. 

Represent to yourself now, Sir, the claims that the apostles 
and those who have followed their steps, have acquired to our 
admiration, our gratitude and our love. They have dispelled far 
from us the mists of error and idolatry, brought back the people 
to the worship of the true God, softened the ferocity of nations, 
enlightened the mind by their instructions, touched the heart by 
their example, prepared succors and consolations for every kind 
of misery; confirmed some in the way of virtue, shewn to others 
the way of penance, to all the way to heaven : incessantly labor- 
ing for us, never for themselves, they terminated a life of priva- 
tions, sufferings and indefatigable labors by the magnanimous 
sacrifice of life ; and in heaven, in the full enjoyment of felicity, 
they continue to assist by their fervent intercession those whom 
they can no longer animate by their voice and example. Where 
shall we find benefactors equal to these ? And yet, shame, 
base ingratitude ! some persons who call themselves Christians 
blush not to rise up against the honor we pay to the memory of 
these heroes of Christianity. They impute it to us as a crime to 
preserve their spoils, to cherish their ashes, to adorn and visit 
their tombs ; while they themselves are attached to the most in- 
significant object that recalls to their remembrance one whom 
they loved and who is no more : they raise sumptuous mausoleums, 
perhaps to illustrious malefactors of the human race, and they 
melt with sorrow at the sight of a Grecian or Roman female 
figure, holding an urn in her arms, and mingling her tears with 
the aslies of the object she adored ! They make it a crime in ua 
to embrace cold relics; but of whom are they the relics? Of 
those, the impressions of whose footsteps we ought to kiss if they 
were Btill among as. They treat us as senseless idolaters, be- 
cause we place in our Churches the images of an apostle, of a 
martyr, or other holy personage, because we assemble together, 



600 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

»r even fall upon our knees in prayer, before the objects which 
-ecall to our mind so many virtues and benefits, and present to 
as at the same time guides and models in this world, and inter- 
cessors in the other ; and they surround themselves with the 
images of those whom they call great men, and who but too fre- 
quently, together with shining qualities, have had the most 
shameful vices : and they pride themselves in having continually 
before their eyes the image of a friend and protector : take plea- 
sure in its presence, in recalling to their minds the charms of his 
society, or the benefits they have received ; and instead of an 
apostle, or a saint, they permit the portraits of a Mclanchton 
and a Luther to be honorably exposed in their temples, to the 
admiration of spectators I 1 What means this whimsicality of 
judgment? and how are we to account for the excessive rigor, 
with which they pronounce judgment against us? How should 
that, which in the social order is nothing but natural or innocent, 
or even laudable, become in the order of religion, senseless, 
criminal, and idolatrous? Listen a moment, Sir, and then be 
yourself the judge. On beholding the relics of the saints, on 
approaching their mortal remains, a religious respect suddenly 
steals upon us. The remembrance of the virtues they practised, 

1 1 have seen these two portraits in the Lutheran Church at Wittcmberg, and 
was informed that the likenesses were most correct. The one presents a pale, 
emaciated, and tranquil countenance, with a pleasant and modest look : the other, 
a middle-aged man, rigorous and of a full habit, his complexion ruddy, his eye 
ardent and daring, such as he appeared no doubt, when, trampling modesty under 
foot, he pronounced from the pulpit these words, which I transcribe with ablush :* 
" As it is not in my power not to be a man, so neither is it in my power to live 
without a woman, and that is more necessary for me than eating, drinking, and 

satisfying the necessities of the body" (His portrait shews sufficiently that 

he had not arrived at his age without indulging himself abundantly in eating and 
drinking : for the rest, how can we disbelieve what he declares respecting him- 
self?) " If the women are obstinate," continues the new Evangelist, " it is proper 
that the husbands should say to them : If you arc not willing, another woman 
will: if the mistress will not come, the maid servant will." Yet men have per- 
suaded themselves that a preacher of this description was chosen by God to re- 
form his Church! What an inconceivable extravagance ! Shall we never recover 
from it? Shall it then cost man more, frankly to acknowledge his error, than to 
persist in it after it has been discovered ? 

* Serm. preached ml the commencement of his revolt from the Church. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 501 

and of the good they did upon earth, strikes forcibly upon our 
minds. A secret voice seems to break forth from their tombs, 
inviting us to admire and imitate them ; these feet, does it say 
to us, walked constantly in the paths of justice ; these hands 
were ever innocent and pure ; this mouth opened not but to praise 
heaven, or bless men and lead them to virtue ; these limbs lent 
their ministry to virtue and charity alone ; or, if in the days of 
their wandering and weakness, they served the world and its 
follies, their stains were effaced by the abundant tears which 
flowed from these eyes, or by the blood that flowed from these 
veins. Victims of martyrdom and penance, an eternal weight 
of glory repays them for their momentary tribulations : and 
whilst Jesus Christ crowns their blessed souls in heaven, he 
honors also their mortal remains in the dust of the tomb. Here 
not unfrequently have the prayers, animated by the sight of their 
relics, been heard and granted ; here the lame have been cured, 
the blind restored to sight, and the sick to health. Not, how- 
ever, that we are to imagine in these bones or ashes any inherent 
power, any supernatural and divine efficacy ; the very bones and 
ashes themselves admonish us that the saints were but mortals 
like ourselves. But we believe and know that God has some- 
times been pleased to honor them, and signally shew his love for 
his servants, by the wonders he has wrought at their tombs. 
Who has not heard of a dead person being raised to life by 
merely touching the bones of the prophet Eliseus, 1 of the sick 
being cured by the mere shadow of St. Peter, 2 and by the simple 
application of the handkerchiefs and aprons which had only 
touched the body of St. Paul? 3 Who doubts the miraculous 
facts which the primitive Church so often witnessed at the tombs 
of the martyrs ? Wherefore, when we call to mind these extra- 
ordinary graces, or when we ourselves petition for the like in the 
places where they have occurred, we do not address our thanks- 
giving and prayer to the relics lying before us, how holy and 
venerable Boever they may be; but it is God whom we bless for 
having honored them; it is from G-od that we implore through 
1 IV Kings, xiii. 21. 2 Acts, iv. 15. »Aoto, xix. 12. 



502 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

them the same mercies ; from God, in fine, that we petition for 
grace, in union with such or such a saint, whose remains are dear 
to us, and whose memory is precious in his sight. It is from 
God therefore, as from its source, that we derive the respect we 
pay to relics ; and to God, as to its last end, that it is referred — 
in him it terminates.' 

These are our sentiments; we have never had any other. 
They, who believe that we think otherwise, are deceived. There 
is much said about erroneous and superstitious notions frequently 
entertained by people on the subject of relics : I shall not dis- 
pute their existence; and perhaps they were more generally 
spread at the time of the Reformation than at any other period. 
Would to God they had then confined themselves to an attack 
upon those erroneous notions, and had succeeded in eradicating 
them ! But it would be most unreasonable to impute them to the 
Church, who condemns them, and never ceased to combat them, 
and to oppose to them the inculcation of sound doctrine. This 
sound doctrine I have just laid before you ; tell me, Sir, have 
you discovered any thing irrational or criminal in it ! Have you 
discovered, in the respect and veneration we pay to sacred relics, 
so much as a shadow of idolatry ? 

Let Luther indulge, as may suit his fancy, in phillippics 
against relics ; let him treat them as frauds and seductions that 
should be buried deeply under ground; let him declare, in his 
brutish language, that he cares no more for the bones of a saint 
than for those of a hanged malefactor :' let Calvin treat our ven- 
eration as superstitious, and the certain source of idolatry; let 
him teach and preach that the bodies of the saints should have 
been left at peace in their tombs, and not brought out to be de- 
posited in more sumptuous and honorable monuments; let his 

1 Tom. VIII. ed. germ, of Jen. 277. — No doubt, these expressions escaped him 
in a moment of vexation or drunkenness. For in more sober moments he ac- 
knowledges "that God still performed miracles by his saints, at their tombs, in 
presence of their relics : miracles performed before the < •;> ea of the worlcL" Tom. 
I. ed. germ, of Jen. And in another place he says: " Where the true relics of 
the saints are found, there without doubt has been and still is the true Church 
o r Christ; there have the saints dwelt." — Trtatine oh private ma**. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 503 

disciples" and followers spread abroad his maxims, and induce the 
people, by intemperate harangues, to declare an eternal war 
upon relics, let them, with sacrilegious hand, violate the tombs 
of the saints, let them scatter abroad their relics, trample them 
under foot, cast them into the stream, or make bonfires of them 
with ferocious insolence ; let our revolutionists, coming from the 
same school and agitated with the same phrenzy, renew, in the 
eighteenth century, the scenes of atrocity which their predeces- 
sors and masters of the sixteenth had given the example of to 
unfortunate France. 

For our parts, let us be permitted to lament and pity so much 
blindness and madness: our principles and practice come from a 
very different school : we are proud to derive them from the pure 
and primitive Church. We have learned piously to preserve and 
honor the relics of saints, from the affectionate care taken by the 
apostles of the relics of him who first gave his blood for Christ, 
and who first caused the tears of the Church to flow ;' from the 
religious fervor of the Christians in collecting the bodies of SS. 
Peter and Paul immediately after their martyrdom, to trans- 
fer them to a distinguished place in the catacombs, and thence to 
translate them to the first of the Basilicks, which has beheld 
every thing that is great in the world humbly and respectfully 
fall prostrate before their tombs; from the affecting zeal of the 
faithful of Antioch in requiring Rome to restore the remains of 
their illustrious bishop and martyr Ignatius; 2 from that of the 
indefatigable Christians who from Rome to Antioch, from town 
to town, transported them in triumph on their shoulders, re- 
sounding on their way the praises of God, and the glory of his 
crowned champion; from the admirable letter 3 which the Chris- 
tians affectionately read upon the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, 
and which without doubt would have given other notions to the 
Reformers, if these had weighed the following words : "Our 
Bubtle enemy the devil, did his utmost that we should not take 
away the body, aa many of OS anxiously wished. It was sug- 

' A0L-1, viii. 1. "Si. ChrysOB. Disc, on I mi. ;i Tin- Church of Smyrna to that 
of Pontes, in Eufleb. ili-. EccL B. IV. c. 15. 



504 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

gested, that we should desert our crucified master, and -begin to 
worship Polycarp. Foolish men ! who knew not that we never 
can desert Christ, who died for the salvation of all men ; nor 
worship any other. Him we adore as the Son of God ; but we 
shew deserved respect to the martyrs, and his disciples and fol- 
lowers. The centurion, therefore, caused the body to be burnt. 
We then gathered his bones, more precious than pearls and more 
tried than gold, and buried them. In this place, God willing, 
we will meet, and celebrate with joy and gladness the birthday 
of his martyr, as well in memory of those who have been crowned 
before, as, by his example, to prepare and strengthen others for 
the combat." 

We have learned that in the honors rendered to martyrs, the 
Churches of Africa rivalled those of Asia in the second century, 
as Tertullian testifies; 1 "On the days consecrated to the martyrs, 
we sacrifice in memory of their death ;" in the third, according 
to the injunction of St. Cyprian, 2 who exhorts "to be exact in 
the precise inscription of the day of the death of the martyrs, 
that they may be able to celebrate it by gifts and sacrifices." 

We have learned that this respect, judging of it by the prin- 
ciples of reason alone, has been found conformable with the prac- 
tice of antiquity. Plato 3 thought that the brave, who died 
courageously in battle, should be venerated as heroes, and their 
tombs renowned. Eusebius 4 relates this sentiment, and adds; 
"How well does this apply to those friends of God, who are just 
called the soldiers of genuine piety ! For it is our practice to 
honor their sepulchres, there to utter our prayers and our vows 
and to venerate their blessed souls; and this we say is justly 
done." St. Chrysostom 5 has gone so far as to refer it to our 
Saviour; Christ caused himself to be adored by the world after 
his death. And why do I speak of Christ V He has desired that 
his disciples should, after their death, become illustrious. Why 
again do I say his disciples ? He has taken care that the places, 

'De Coron. Milit. 3. *Epist. XXXVII. 3 L. IV. De Repub. "Prepar. 
Evang. L. XIII. c. XI. *Hom. LXVI. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 505 

the days of their death, and their tombs should be celebrated by 
an eternal memorial." 

We have learned also that God has often manifested, by his 
miracles, how agreeable this respect was to him. Of this we 
are furnished with numerous testimonies by antiquity : we will 
confine ourselves to a few. St. Cyril of Jerusalem supposes the 
miraculous facts performed by means of the relics, when to ren- 
der them credible to his catechumens, he said to them :' " From 
the fact of a dead man being restored to life by touching the 
body of Eliseus, we learn that, when the soul is departed, a cex*- 
tain virtue remains in the bodies of saints ; and that, on account 
of the merit of the souls that resided in them. Of this we can- 
not doubt. For if the handkerchiefs and aprons, mere external 
appendages, (of which we read Acts c. 19) cured the sick that 
touched them ; more efficacious, we may conclude, would be the 
body of the prophet." St. Gregory of Nazianzum, 2 speaking 
of miraculous cures, said: "The mere dust of Cyprian, if 
approached with faith, is able to effect them. Those know it, 
who have made the experiment: those also who have seen it, 
who have related it, and who will transmit the remembrance of 
it to posterity." St. Cyril, in his first discourse against Julian, 
apostrophizes him in these words : '■ How is it thou payest no 
respect to those, who are honored with festivals, and by whom 
devils have been expelled, and infirmities cured ?" &e. St. Am- 
brose relates the miraculous cure of the blind man, performed 
before the people of Milan, on the clay of the translation of SS. 
Grerva^e ami Portase, whose bodies had been discovered the day 
before. St. Augustin, then at .Milan, had witnessed the fact, 
and often himself related it afterwards. Hut the Arians con- 
testing thr miracle, St. Ambrose ascended the pulpit the follow- 
ing day, and said: "They deny that the blind man was re- 
stored to his sight: but he himself does not deny that he has been 
cured. He says: I. who could nut see at all before, can now 
see. lie says; I am no longer blind, ami he proves it by the 
fart. These people, being unable t<> contradict the fact, reject 

'Catech. Will, <>n Resurr. 'Serm. on St. Cyprian. 



5 OB ON TTTR CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

the miraculous grace. The man is known in all this town 

His name is Severus, by profession a butcher He protests 

that having touched the linen, that covered the sacred relics, his 
Bight was immediately restored to him.' M 

We have learned again that the relics of the saints were placed 
with honor on the ancient altars, as they are upon ours. " But 
if the relics of saints deserve no veneration, the bishop of Rome 
is greatly to be blamed, who, over the bones of Peter and Paul, 
venerable in our estimation, vile and contemptible in yours, of- 
fers sacrifice to the Lord, and regards their tombs as the altars 
of Christ?" 2 St. Ambrose 3 says: "Receive therefore as pledges 
of salvation the bodies of the holy martyrs (Vitalis and Agricola ) 
deposited under these sacred altars." And elsewhere: 4 "Let 
these triumphant victims be lodged in the place where Jesus 
Christ is our Host: upon the altar, Him who has suffered for all; 
under the altar, them who have been redeemed by his death. I 
had intended this place for myself: for it is just that the priest 
should repose where the priest has so frequently offered sacrifice. 
But I yield my right to these sacred victims : it is due to mar- 
tyrs." — "I recommend to your charity," says St. Augustin, 
"this place and this feast: let us celebrate both in honor of the 
God whom Stephen confessed. For here we have not raised an 
altar to Stephen, but from the relics of Stephen an altar to God." 
According to this great bishop, the bodies of the martyrs ap- 
peared to St. John under the altar in heaven ; because their 
bodies were deposited under altars here below. He believed, 
therefore, that this ancient practice of the Church went back to 
the apostolic times. 

We have learned in fine that the faithful of the first ages ea- 
gerly resorted to the tombs of the martyrs, that they divided 
their relics, aud respectfully kissed them. You shall now see 
comprised, in a single passage, almost the whole system of our 
respect to the saints. 

'We find many miracles of this kind attested by St. Chrysostom. St. Isidore 
of Pamietta, by Palladius, SS. Jerome, Augustin, &c. *St. Jer. against Vi/il 
c. II. J Exhort, to Religious Virgins. ' Epist. LXXXV. on SS. Gerv. and Plot. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 507 

St. Gregory of Nyssa, after saying that the body of Theodore 
had been honorably deposited and placed with great respect in 
the holy place ; after describing the magnificence of the Basi- 
lick, constructed at a great expense, with admirable art, orna- 
mented interiorly by master-pieces of painting, which represented 
our Saviour, and his martyr throughout the successive variety 
of torment he had endured, the Christian orator adds: 1 "From 
the admiration produced by the sight of so many wonders, we 
pass eagerly to the tomb ; we approach it with the hope that by 
touching it we may receive some benediction. He who obtains, 
as a favor, permission to carry away some little dust of the se- 
pulchre, receives and preserves it as a treasure of great value. 
But if fortunately he be allowed to touch the relics themselves, 
he has attained the height of his wishes. Those know it well, 
who have been admitted to this favor, and whose desires were 
accomplished. The body of the martyr appears to them in a 
state of froshness, as if it was still breathing ; they kiss it and 
successively apply to it their eyes, mouth, ears, and all their 
senses." 

"He, who rules the earth and seas, eagerly resorts to the 
tomb of the Fisherman ; to enjoy the consolation of kissing his 
relics.'" St. Augustin 3 has expressed the same sentiment, which 
St. Chrysostom bad uttered before both of them, "You see the 
illustrious chief of the greatest of empires appear as a suppliant 
at the to : b of the Fisherman, and the head that bears the dia- 
c l< -in humbly bowing before the remains of Peter." "For our 
part, we say not that the martyrs were gods : but it is our custom 
t«i render honor to their tombs, and veneration to their relics." 4 
" It is they," says St. Basil, "who, having taken possession of 
our country. Btand as towers against the incursions of the enemy. 
They are not confined to one place, but, dispersed about, they 
are b come the guests and the citizens of many countries, which 
i .lorn wit 1 1 their presence." Hear now what St* Chrysostom 
said to his people: 11 " Formyself, I admire Rome, and celebrate 
> Due. im tho Mart. Thood. -St. bid. of Dam. B. II. p. 6. 3 Epist. XUI. 

«Si. Cyril *ifl <i Julian, B. VI. > D'uc. on the Portj Martyra. >Hom.XXXH. 

to Uii.u. 



508 ON THE CHURCH Of ENGLAND 

it, not for the splendor and abundance of its gold, not for the 
magnificent edifices, but for those two columns of the Church 
which it possesses. who will give me to embrace the body of 

Paul to cling to his sepulchre, to contemplate even the dust 

of his body! the dust, I say, of that mouth by which Jesus 

fTbrist has spoken to us, and from which came forth a light more 

resplendent than the sun Yes, I could wish to see the tomb, 

which encloses those weapons of justice and truth, those mem- 
bers still living This body, with that of Peter, shall always 

be for Home a more secure defence than walls and towers." 
" If any one should say to me : ' What is it you honor in a body 
already consumed by dissolution?'' Let your doctors now pay 
attention to the answer given to this question by the great arch- 
bishop of Milan. " I honor, in the body of a martyr, the scars 
received for the name of Christ. I honor the memory of him, 
who lives eternally by his virtue. I honor the ashes become 
sacred by confessing the Lord, I honor in these ashes the seeds 
of immortality ; I honor a body which teaches me to love Crod, 
and not to be afraid of dying for him : and why should not the 
faithful hold in estimation and honor a body that casts terror and 

dismay among the devils! I honor a body which, under the 

sword, has honored Christ, and which is one day to reign with 
him in heaven." 

There is nothing, even to the wax candles we light, and the 
incense we burn, before the relics, the example and practice of 
which we do not find in the Christian antiquity. To prove this, 
it would suffice to produce the reproach which Vigilantius * thought 
fit to cast upon the whole Church in this particular. Among 
the presents that Constantine made to the relics of Peter, Paul, 
Laurence and of the true cross, were candlesticks, lamps and 
what was to be burnt continually in the Roman basilick. When 
this great Emperor terminated his days at Constantinople, his 
body was carried into a large apartment of the imperial palace, 
elevated upoii a. catafalque covered and surrounded with gilded 
candlesticks, and so thickly lighted up as to present a most bril- 
1 St. Ambrose Serin XCIII. 'Lite of Sylvest. Collec. of Councils, Tom. I. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 509 

liant and magnificent appearance ; never, as Eusebius reports, 
never since the creation, was so grand a spectacle exhibited to 
the world. Theodoret relates that, at the translation of St. Chry- 
sostom, his relics were preceded by a great number of lights. 1 

Fire is an emblem of life : ' It is also a sign of glory, and 
was formerly borne before Emperors and Empresses. Under 
both these relations, about whom can it be more appropriately 
employed than about the saints, whose souls already reign in the 
glory of heaven, and whose bodies are destined to a life eternal. 
The pagans, it is true, have employed fire, incense and lights 
before their idols. But, because these blinded creatures have 
miserably abused them, shall it be unlawful for us to employ them 
to a better purpose? " That was done for the idols," said St. 
Jerome, "and then it was to be abhorred: it is now done for 
the martyrs, and on that account, it is to be approved." 2 You 
have just heard the sentiments of some of the most illustrious 
Fathers of the first ages : they have made you acquainted with 
what was observed in their time. I leave you to compare with 
their practice and doctrine, the discourse and the conduct of those 
who gave themselves out for reformers and reformed : judge now 
yourself whether these latter are not evidently convicted by the 
primitive Church of sacrilege toward sacred relics. 

1 Here are some verses, which are not without merit for poetical description, 
ami which may perhaps be read by the lover of antiquity with some interest. 
They are from St Paulinas: hois d -scribing the manner iu which the Church 
and the altars were ornamented for the feast of St. Felix. 

Anna nunc niveifi orbantur linupa velis: 
Clara coronantur <i"nsi< altaria lychnis, 
Limina ceratu adolentar odora papj rifl. 
{facte, diequo micani : sic mix splendorqoe diei 
Fulgct, '-i ipsa dies coelesti illustris honore 

] 'Iu- micat, innwneris lu< geminate lacernis 

II irodian, li. I. »Cont. Vigilan. 

43* 



510 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

LETTER XVI. 

Images 

Who would have imagined that the sixteenth century was 
destined to witness a renewal of the disputes and outrages con- 
cerning images, which had so cruelly agitated the eighth? On 
the first appearance of the Iconoclasts, supported by Leo the 
Isaurian, the most learned men of the day, headed by German, 
the patriarch of Constantinople, justified the Church on the 
ridiculous and calumnious notions attributed to her worship. 
The second council of Nice, convoked by the empress Irene and 
pope Adrian, discussed the question most maturely, and defined :' 
' ' That pictures and images are set up in Churches and other 
places that at the sight of them the faithful may remember what 
they represent : and that the honor paid to images passes to the 
archetypes or things represented, so that, he, who reveres the 
image, reveres the person it represents." It approves conse- 
quently of the expression of Leontius, bishop of Napoli in the 
Island of Cyprus: "When you see Christians adore the cross, 
know that they pay their adoration to Jesus Christ crucified, and 
not to the wood " And as the word adoration is a general ex- 
pression, applying to God, the angels, the person of the emperors 
and their statues, to animate and even to inanimate things, as 
well informed persons of all parties admits the council distinguishes 
the adoration due to God alone from that which may be rendered 
to other objects : it calls the first adoration of latria, and con- 
fines it to God alone : the latter, which is paid to images, it calls 
s<rfitt((t)'on, a relative and inferior honor, which passes to the 
original ; but is ever distinct from the worship of latria, which 
exclusively belongs to the divine nature. 

These decisions had been applauded in the East, and confirmed 

in Italy : the Churches of France and Germauy, at first deceived 

by an unfaithful version, supposed that the fathers of Nice were 

allowing to images adoration properly so called, and unanimously 

•Act VI. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 511 

and very justly condemned such an opinion : but no sooner did 
they discover their mistake than they acknowledged with joy that 
the doctrine really propounded by the council of Nice was the 
doctrine of antiquity. The seventh council therefore had at 
last received the consent of the universal Church ; all were 
unanimous, all in peace : images received in public worship the 
veneration due to them : three centuries passed in this wise and 
peaceable uniformity. Peter de Bruys, and, after him, the Yau- 
dois, and the Albigenses begin to create disunion in France ; 
later still, Carlostadtius renews their excesses in Wittemberg : 
Luther hastens thither to restore order, reproves his rash disci- 
ple, writes against the iconomachs, and reproaches them for a 
spirit, which, he said, would never breathe any thing but fury, 
blood and slaughter. But the Zuinglians and Calvinists quickly 
renew the war against images, and fill the world with their 
clamors and invectives, which are still re-echoed in our days. 
"What fresh discovery had they made ? Did any new reasons 
present themselves, which had escaped the Iconoclasts of the 
eighth century *? Nothing of the kind. But perhaps the Catholic 
Church had latterly transgressed the prescribed bounds, in her 
doctrine and practice? Very far from it. Once denned, her 
principles are irrevocable : she herself is immutably chained by 
bonds, which at no future period can she ever rend asunder. 
Again then, what means this aggression of the reformed, what 
is their object in reproducing calumnies refuted and crushed so 
many ages before ? They were anxious to find some crimes in 
the Church, from whom they had just separated. Cost what it 
will, she must 1»' proved idolatrous. Although she can soundly 
and triumphantly clear herself of the charge, it matters not: 
by dint of rep< bition wo shall drive it into our followers, and 
Stagger hers; many of hop own children will be panic-struck and 
take to flight: their defection will increase our party, and the 
work of separation, professing a horror of idolatry, will be per- 
petuated to the ond of time. 1 

'This imputation of idolatry succeeded in gaining credit in England, although 
with difficulty. "The que .1." »ayi Burnet "seemed in think the use of im 



512 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Unfortunately for the execution of this noble and charitable 
enterprise, 1 there was nothing new to give to the people. They 
were compelled to bring forward the superannuated objections of 
the Iconoclasts, the principal of which was drawn from the first 
or second commandment, according as the Decalogue happens to 
be divided, which is not of any essential importance. Since that 
time, they have laid much stress upon the dangers, as regards 
the people, of passing from the relative worship that we defend, 
to the absolute worship that we all condemn, upon the novelty 
of this relative worship in the Church, and upon the opposition 
they pretend to say • that it found at its commencement in the 
opinion of some of the Fathers. You will, I flatter myself, soon 
see that these objections are far from being solid. Observe, 
moreover, that even were the two latter well founded, they would 
by no means establish the fact of idolatry, neither would they 
afford any just ground for the schism ; for, evidently, the danger 
of becoming idolatrous does not prove a man to be so, and the 
novelty of a relative worship, supposing it to be admitted for a 
moment, could prove nothing more than that such worship is not 
necessary ; and this we all allow. 

The ancient Iconoclasts had discovered in the precept of the 

in Churches might be a means to stir up devotion, and that at. least it would draw 
all people to frequent them the more."* But not being able to resist the party 
which had now quite prevailed, the supreme governess was compelled to act con- 
trary to her ideas and wishes; for, says Burnet again, \ "The queen put it into 
her injunctions to have all images removed out of the Church." 

2 If I am accused of being deficient in charity, by supposing in the Calvinistic 
reformers so odious and criminal an intention, 1 ask, whether it be possible for 
ecclesiastics, instructed, as they were, in the bosom of the Church, not to know- 
that idolatry was not taught in the Church they had forsaken: not to know that 
they had not been trained by their superiors to render an idolatrous worship to 
images, and that they themselves had never paid such worship, either in the 
Churches which they had governed, or in the monasteries to which thay had 
belonged. What then originated this accusation of theirs against the Chmch V 
1 say it with sorrow, for it must be said; it must have sprung from that hatred 
which envenoms all that it touches, and which, to destroy an enemy changes the 
most innocent and laudable actions into crimes. 

* Burnet's Hist, of the reformat. Part 2, Book 3. p. 39?. London, 1681, Fol.— t Had. 
p. 3US. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN UENERAL. 513 

Decalogue two prohibitions absolutely distinct ; the one, prohibit- 
ing the making of "any graven thing, or the likeness of any 
thing that is in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in 
the waters under the earth;" the other, prohibiting us to "adore 
or serve them ;" or as the Protestant Scripture has it, ' ' to bow 
down to them or worship them." By taking the two parts, which 
they made thus distinct, strictly according to the latter, they 
found that the divine commandment as strictly forbade the mak- 
ing of them as the bowing down to them ; they felt that if they 
once softened down the prohibition to make them, they would be 
obliged equally to soften down the prohibition to honor them : 
being resolved to make no mitigation in the second, they carried 
the first to an outrageous extravagance, and unhesitatingly pro- 
nounced anathema, not only on those who adored images, but on 
those also who presumed to make them, or place them either in 
the Churches or in private houses. Proceeding thus from con- 
sequence to consequence, they at last went so far as to pronounce 
that painting is an abominable and impious art, an art forbidden 
by heaven, an invention of a diabolical spirit, that ought to be 
exterminated from the Church." Such is the decree of their 
famed conventicle at Constantinople, 1 so boasted of by the re- 
formed, who have even thought proper to call it the eighth oecu- 
menical council, although they must have known perfectly well, 
that the occumenicity of a council depends upon its general ac- 
ceptation, and that this conventicle of theirs excited nothing but 
a universal indignation ; that even those of the bishops, who lived 
thirty years after its celebration, solemnly retracted in the second 
council of Nice , 2 and confessed that they had yielded through 
weakness to the riolenf tin-eats of Constantine Copronymus. 
* That there ahonld have been found three hundred and sixty- 
six bishops sufficiently servile to adopt against painting and sculp- 
ture, the notions which the brutal and savage Copronymus had 
borrowed from barbarian Mahometans and some fanatical .lews: 
sufficiently depraved to define, contrary to their conscience, that 
all making of images and statues is forbidden bylho law of Cod; 
'An. 754. » An. 787. 



514 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to attribute to the devil two arts the sole object of which is to 
imitate the work of the Creator, and the merit of which procures 
honor to the artist and exquisite delight to the man of taste, is 
base and corrupt and shameful to a degree. For the question 
had been learnedly discussed under the preceding reign of the 
Isaurian ; it had been explained in the most luminous manner by 
two men of superior minds and intrepid souls, German, patriarch 
of Constantinople, and John Damascen, whose writings we still 
admire. It was therefore well understood, under the reign of 
Copronymous, that the Decalogue does not forbid sculpture and 
painting, since we read 1 that God commanded Moses to make the 
ark of the testimony and to place on each side the statue of a 
cherub ; since we read 2 that he commanded him to make a bra- 
zen serpent and set it up, which, when they that were bitten by 
the serpents, look upon, they were to be healed; since we read 
again 3 that God "called Beseleel, and filled him with wisdom 
and understanding, and knowledge in all manner of work, to de- 
vise whatsoever may be artificially made of gold, and silver, and 
brass, of marble and precious stones, and variety of wood." All 
this had been brought forward and often repeated, and I doubt 
whether there was a single bishop in the conventicle of 754, who 
was not perfectly instructed in the subject. Thus, I cannot dis- 
cover any other motive for their unworthy conduct, than that 
which was afterwards avowed by many of them — the fear of ex- 
posing themselves to the rage of a furious and ungovernable 
tyrant. 4 

It must be said, to the praise of the Iconoclasts of the six- 
teenth century, that they almost all abandoned their ancestors of 
the eighth, as far as related to these extravagant notions. They 

1 Exodus, xxv. 3 Xum. xxi. 3 Exodus xxxi. 4 Six Iconoclast emperors have, 
in times past, troubled the Church and the world during one hundred and thirty 
years. At an earlier peiiod, Constantius and Valens had excited a tremendous 
commotion in the business of the Arians. Since that time, Michael and Baidas 
separated the Greek and Latin Churches, supported the pretensions of Photius, 
renewed three centuries afterwards by the monk Cerularius, and consolidated 
with the assistance of the imperial authority by a schism which continues to this 
day. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 515 

do not explain the command in a sense so totally opposite to most 
numerous passages of Scripture. They esteem and encourage 
the talents of the painter and the sculptor : they highly prize the 
master-pieces of the first artists, collect them at a great expense, 
and preserve them with peculiar care. So far we are agreed. 
But in general they make it a crime in us to place in our Churches 
the paintings which they place in their galleries and apartments. 
The same crime they must equally impute to the Greek and even 
Lutheran Churches. Let them visit England, and there they 
will very frequently see Moses and Elias represented with the 
tables of the law; let them enter Windsor Castle, and they will 
there find a beautiful representation of the last supper; let them 
go to Cambridge to be delighted with the royal chapel of the 
most delicate gothic structure, and there they will be struck with 
admiration on beholding a beautiful painting of the Italian school. 
During the whole of Elizabeth's reign, was to be seen in the 
oratory of her place, as Thuanus relates, a crucifix : which she 
could never be prevailed upon to part with. I doubt not that 
these facts are known by the greater part of Calvanistic writers; 
but they pass them by unnoticed; it is in us that such things 
are objectionable: in us every thing annoys them, even what 
thi'v willingly concede to others, provided that in any one single 
point they make common cause with them against us. Their se- 
verity is entirely for Catholics; their indulgence for anyone who 
is not a Catholic. 

Set they do not agree in their charges against us. Some are 
positive that we are downright idolaters, because we contemplate 
with respect ami affection the images exposed in our Churches, 
because we go down upon oor knees, in prayer* because we light 
tapers and burn incense before them. But, let me ask, where 
the [sraelites idolaters when they turned their eves devoutly to- 
wards the Banetuary in which were deposited the ark and the 
cherubim? or when, in the posture of Buppliants, they caal an 
of confidence and hope upon the brazen serpent? Were 
Josue and all the ancients of Israel, idolaters, because they reli- 
giously fell prostrate on the ground before the ark of the testa- 



5 Hi ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

meut ? Was David an idolater, when he brought back the ark 
of God with all the pomp and solemnity mentioned in the Scrip- 
ture? And, to refer to your own customs, are the peers of your 
realm idolaters, because, when passing the throne, they always 
turn towards it and respectfully bow to it? Are all Englishmen 
idolaters, because, at divine service, they religiously bow their 
heads to the name of Jesus ? Or is it more idolatrous to bow 
before an image that strikes our eyes, than at the sound of the 
name of Jesus that strikes our ears? 

What, I ask again, has idolatry to do with the tapers we burn, 
not' only, on occasions, before an image, but always before the 
altar during divine service, and which we multiply as a sign of 
joy, on great solemnities? What has idolatry to do with the in- 
cense we give, not only to images, but also, according to very 
ancient custom, to the altar, the officiating minister, the book of 
the Gospels, all the clergy, the temporal lords, the people, and 
even the dead? Eusebius 1 relates a miracle wrought by the holy 
bishop of Narcissus in 250, which at once both proves and jus- 
tifies the custom of lighting lamps in the Church of Jerusalem. 
He teaches also 2 that on the eve of the Pasch, besides the illu- 
minations of the Churches, Constantine ordered large wax tapers 
and all sorts of lamps to be lighted and burnt in the streets of 
the capital, so that the night was bright as day. "In all the 
Churches of the East," says St. Jerome, 3 " they light tapers in 
open day, when the Gospel is read ; evidently not to give greater 
light, but as a sign of joy, and as a symbol of the divine light, 
of which it is written in the Psalms : Thy word is the light, en- 
lightening my paths." St. Isidore of Seville 4 testifies to the 
same custom, and attributes it to the same motive : "As a sign 
of joy," says he, "that this material light may represent the 
light of which it is written in the Gospel. He was the true 
light." Since the fourth age, the bodies of the faithful departed 
have been carried into the Church with a great number of lighted 
tapers. The emperor Constantine, St. Paul, St. Simeon Sty- 

'llist. Ecdea. L. VI. C. VII. *Life of Constantine, B. IV. 3 Epist. against 
Vigil. 'I!. VII. on the Orig. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 517 

lites, and very many others, the account of whose funeral obse- 
quies have been committed to writing, were carried in this man- 
ner, and to this day the custom prevails among us. "We know 
also from the testimonies of St. Paulinus, and of Prudentius, 
that, in the same age, tapers were burnt at the tombs of the 
martyrs, day and night. 

As for incense, it appears that it was not used in the Churches 
during the three first ages, "Truly" said Tertullian, 1 "we do 
not purchase incense. If the merchants of Arabia complain, 
the Sabeans will know that we employ more of their aromatic 
spices, and with more profusion in the burial of Christians, than 
you consume in incensing your gods." Incense was at that time 
prostituted to idols. The Christians no doubt waited till they 
were no longer surrounded by these detestable perfumes, to offer 
an agreeable incense to God, for from the fourth century we find 
it employed in our temples. The liturgies point out the incen- 
sings about the altar, and the accompanying prayers. The Apos- 
tolical canons, attributed to St. Dionysius, the Areopagite, speak 
of it. "Do not bury me with aromatic spices," said St. Ephrem 
in his Testament ; " offer them to God ; but accompany me with 
your prayers." — " Would to God," says St. Ambrose, 2 "that an 
angel were present, or rather should become visible, " when we 
incense the altars." And to cite also one of your venerable 
countrymen; 3 "Let the incense smoke on the Feasts of the 
saints,"' said he, "because like lilies, they have spread upon 
earth an odoriferous perfume." And indeed, Sir, is it possible 
to choose a more natural and happy emblem of our prayers than 
incense, which by the activity of the fire, mounts into the air, 
like as oar prayers, animated by the fire of divine love, mount 
up to heaven? Accordingly it is the emblem, under which the 
Hoiy Spirit is pleased to represent to us the prayers, which the 
angels offer to God for us.' Is it not then truly deplorable that 
a few discontented, turbulent, and ta itelese individuals should in 
I. itter ages have determined up m reforming Antiquity, and 

lApol. C. XI. II. •('minim, on St. Lake, B, I. c. I. v. II. <Tl ,1. Arehbub. 

of Canter. 7th cent. On Penance, c. I. 'Apocalypse, 

■I l 



518 on the cnuRcn of England 

should have taken upon themselves to calumniate the most ven- 
erable customs, and to inspire a horror of them, by representing 
them as idolatrous ? 

Others, less violent, are satisfied with maintaining that the 
honor paid to Jesus Christ, to his blessed mother and to the 
saints, in the presence of their images are a violation of the di- 
vine precept. ' ' Let them believe or not, say they, that there is 
a hidden virtue in the image ; whether they confine to the image 
their thoughts and worship, or whether they pass on further, 
and raise their mind to the original ; if they humble and pros- 
trate themselves before the image, it is a violation of the law of 
God, it is going against the words of the legislator, it is awak- 
ening his jealousy, and provoking his vengeance." Such I know 
to be the precise expressions of one from among them. But the 
assertion caunot be supported ; the precept forbids no such thing. 
Do they seriously imagine that the most celebrated Fathers, the 
noblest geniuses of Christian anticpuity, and the universal Church 
did not understand before them this precept of the Decalogue ? 
Do they indeed expect to persuade us that it was reserved for 
the preachers of the sixteenth century, to give the key to the 
true understanding of it to the world *? Is there a man of sense, 
who does not immediately reject so ridiculous a pretension ? And 
yet, we do not refuse to examine it, in order that we may not be 
accused of a want of complaisance and regard towards our sepa- 
rated brethren. 

I observed a little above that, by general consent, the Israel- 
ites were not idolaters, when they prayed upon their knees be- 
fore the brazen serpent ; that David, Josue, the Ancients, and 
all the people were not idolaters, when they sung or fell prostrate 
on their face before the Ark and the Cherubim. Much less will 
it be said that they were prevaricators of the divine law upon 
these different occasions. It is not true, therefore, that the 
signs of joy, veneration, and humility, such as the genuflexion 
or even a complete prostration before all kinds of images, are so 
many prevarications against the Decalogue. But what are the 
images before which these signs merit the name of crime and 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 519 

idolatry ? And what is the true signification of the first Com- 
mandment? The Scripture alone will answer these questions. 
God said: "Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me. 
Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing." Here those 
images are meant, which are taken for other gods, and which are 
raised in opposition to the only true God. "Thou shalt not 
make to thyself the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, 
or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the 
waters under the earth." "Who does not clearly see that this di- 
vision refers to the sun and the stars, which the Chananeans 
adored ; to the oxen and animals, which Egypt adored ; and to 
the serpents and fishes which the Philistines and Egyptians 
adored? Marking, therefore, these three kinds of idols which 
surrounded the Israelites, the Lord proceeds: "Thou shalt not 
adore them nor serve them : I am the Lord thy God mighty, 
jealous, &c." The images proscribed and before which it is for- 
bidden to fall prostrate, are those, therefore, which were served 
and adored ; the images to which the neighboring nations pros- 
tituted the worship exclusively belonging to God ; the images 
which, raised in his place and before his face, excited his jealousy 
and indignation ; and not the images which like the ark, the 
cherubim, the brazen serpent, &c. received neither service nor 
adoration. Whence it follows that no other reasonable interpre- 
tation can be given to the commandment but this. Thou shalt 
not make a graven thing, or the likeness of any thing, for the 
purpose of adoring and serving it. 

If you require a still more decisive proof of this, the Scrip- 
ture gives it in express terms in the Book of Leviticus, 1 where 
tli ■ same order is repeated in these words: " I am the Lord your 
God: you shall not make to yourself any idol or graven thing, 
neither shall you erect pillars, nor set up a remarkable stone iu 
your land to adore it." By comparing these two passages, we 
clearl) discover that the precept is tin' sameagainsi images; the 
sense therefore i- alee the same: evidently the allusion iu Lovit- 

1 Lev. xxvi. 



520 ON THE CUUKCII OF BNQClAND 

teas is to images made to be adored; therefore the allusion is the 
same in Exodus. 

In Leviticus, this precept forbids, besides images, pillars and 
remarkable stones. It forbids ecpually and at once the making 
of them, in order to adore them : therefore it does not forbid 
them, if they are not made in order to be adored. And in fact 
did not Josue 2 raise twelve large stones in memory of the mi- 
raculous passage over the Jordan? Did he not again raise one, 
at the close of his life, to perpetuate the remembrance of the al- 
liance contracted by his ministry between God and the people of 
Israel ? All Israel flew to arms in order to combat those who 
dwelt beyond the Jordan, immediately that they suspected them 
of raising altars to strange gods; but did it not lay down its 
arms as soon as it understood that the stones raised in the form 
of an altar had no other object than to attest their union with 
the other tribes separated from them by the Jordan ? Did not 
Samuel also ? 3 raise a stone as a monument of a victory gained 
over the Philistines ? It is plain from these facts that, although 
it was forbidden to erect pillars and stones to be adored, it was 
nevertheless permitted to raise them with a different view : it is 
therefore equally plain that, although it was forbidden to make 
images to be adored, it was permitted to make them with other 
intentions. 

Now that we have established the sense of the Decalogue, 
and proved that it only forbids the images that are made to be 
adored, I return to those of our adversaries who oppose the di- 
vine law to all the signs of joy, piety, and veneration expressed 
by Catholics before images, and I say to them ; If the precept- 
speaks only of images made to be adored ; if it says nothing of 
those which might be made with another intention, as you grant 
that ours are, how is it that you would interdict the signs of piety 
expressed before these latter ? Suppose that the Israelites, hav- 
ing raised pillars or stones, not to adore them, but to perpetuate 
the remembrance of a victory, should give themselves up to re- 
joicing around them, and .should render in their presence thanks- 
1 Josue, iv. -I. Hook of Kings: vii. 12. 



AND TIIE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 521 

givings to the God of armies, would you in such case accuse 
them of prevarications ? "Would you say, that by their joy and 
canticles, they infringe the precept of Leviticus ? Undoubtedly 
not, you will reply : for the precept spoke not of this kind of 
stones or columns, but only of those which should be raised to 
be adored. Well then, say as much with us respecting images : 
the Decalogue forbids not demonstrations of joy and veneration 
in the presence of them, since their only object is to represent 
to us venerable personages ; for it speaks not at all of this kind 
of images, but only of those which should be fabricated to be 
adored. 

Carefully examine the precepts which Moses so often inculcates 
against idolatry, and you will find that the images proscribed are 
always those which were regarded as divinities. " Turn ye not 
to idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods. I am the Lord 
your God Thou shalt not enter into league with the inhabi- 
tants of those countries. Thou shalt not adore their gods nor 
serve them. Thou shalt not do their works, but shalt destroy 

them and break their statues You heard the voice of God in 

Horeb, but saw not any similitude of him ; lest perhaps being 
deceived, you might make you a graven similitude, or image of 
male or female, the similitude of any beasts, that are upon the 
earth, or of birds, that fly under heaven, or of creeping things, 
that move on the earth, or of fishes, that abide in the waters un- 
der the earth ; lest perhaps, lifting up thy eyes to heaven, thou 
Bee the son and the moon and all the stars of heaven, and/being 
ived by error, thou adore and serve them, which the Lord 
t!iv God created for the service of all tin' nations which are un- 
der the heaven, (V<-."' These and other similar passages prove 
that, the legislator always contemplates and denounces the images 
— the idols of th<; Gentiles, the divinities of metal and stones, 
which they adored, and ko which t!i •>■ offered sacrifice. Such 
ape the images which God held in abomination. Such and such 
only are the images before which he forbids his people to tall 
prostrate, after the example of the nations. In a word, the pre- 
1 Bsodiu xxiii. Lwit, as. I. Dent. Iv.pasrim. 



522 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

cept solely refers to the idols and the worship that was paid to 
them throughout the world : and the denunciations of the law 
are confined to these idols and this worship. 

After this, one might suppose that all our adversaries would 
have frankly acknowledged that the precept of the Decalogue 
regards not at all that kind of respect which images receive 
amongst us : but such is not the case ; there are still a certain 
number who cannot prevail upon themselves to do us that justice. 
They are determined to find us guilty of a violation of the di- 
vine law; and, to this end, affect to call our images idols and our 
respect the worship of pagans. In so doing, the disgrace intended 
for us tails principally upon themselves, since nothing but hatred, 
prejudice or a want of sincerity could inspire such ideas and con- 
duct. " We know," said St. Paul, 1 "that an idol is nothing in 
the world." What, in fact, was the Jupiter of the Greeks, what 
was his heavenly court on Olympus, but the brilliant chimeras 
of a misguided imagination ? And, supposing the object but an 
ideal phantom, since it has neither being, substance, motion, 
nor life, what will be the representation made of it, but some- 
thing still more vain and empty than the shadow itself? Pass 
over in your mind the other objects of idolatry, the stars, the 
animals of the brute creation, or if you please, the heroes and 
emperors whom gratitude and adulation transformed into demi- 
gods : How unquestionable soever their existence and influence 
might have been in this world, they could not be in the next 
world such as they were supposed to be ; and under this point of 
view, the images representing them as gods, represented nothing 
but lies, and were themselves mere deceit and nothings. In its 
widest extent, therefore this saying is true : " An idol is nothing 
in the world." Will the same reasoning apply to our images? 
They represent to us, in the saints, beings which on earth were 
like to us, our brethren, humble and faithful servants of God ; 
and in heaven, beatified but still dependent souls, whose influence 
entirely lies in their prayers and supplications ; whose happiness 
consists in praising and possessing their Creator; whose happy 

1 Cor. viii. i. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 523 

existence is such as is suitable to creatures alone, and such as 
we ourselves shall obtain, if we imitate their example. There 
is, therefore, between idols and our images, considered as to their 
objects, an essential difference ; the difference between what is 
reasonable and what is absurd, between truth and impossibility, 
between being and nothing. 

' The difference is not less striking between the worship of idols 
and that of our images. The pagans had carried their credulity 
so far as to imagine that they contemplated the divinity itself in 
their statues. They thought that it was present within them, 
whether it was that the gods descended into the images prepared 
for them, and thus became incorporated with corruptible matter, 
or that, by virtue of the consecration, they were attracted to 
them. In whatever manner they understood it, they regarded 
the statues as inhabited by gods who lived and breathed within 
them, who saw with their eyes, heard with their ears, and eat 
with their mouths : All this is so extravagant that we cannot 
conceive it : but the fact is certain, with the exception only of 
some few enlightened individuals. All authors, sacred and pro- 
fane, bear testimony to it. We can have no doubt of it, since 
Arnobius 1 testifies it of himself. "Lately, profound blind- 
ness ! I was venerating images that came from the hand of the 

workman, and were formed by the anvil and the hammer as 

if the Divinity was present in them ; I praised them ; I spoke to 

them, and asked favors of them I thought that wood and stone 

were gods, or that gods dwelt in these different materials."' 2 In 

1 B. I. against the Gentiles. 
-Since revelation has dispersed the darkness that obscured human reason, we 
find it difficult to conceive the excessive stupidity of the pagans. Having lost 
Bight of tfa ■ infinite Intelligence, which had created the universe, and perceiving 
nothing hut what was Bensible and material, they adored the heavens, the stars, 
the elements, the earth, animals, rivers, fountains, and nature in general. The 
best discoveries of the most cultivated people were to figure to themselves gods 
under human shape, clothed with bodies like ours, hut more vigorous and active, 
of more noble shape and proportions, and enjoying perpetual youth; endowed 
moreover with the power of traversing space in rapid chariots, and of Bhroading 
themselves In ;« oload from the sighl of mortals, for they refused them none of 
Lcellencies. They believed also that it was the power of art and imagina- 



524 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

consequence of this belief, they feared them, and beheld them 
with admiration ; they addressed to them their prayers and vows ; 
and offered victims in sacrifice to them. They religiously returned 
thanks for the favors supposed to be received from them : even 
misfortunes, destined to call man back to his God, led them to 
the feet of their idols, which they endeavored to appease by sup- 
plications and offerings. In a word, they solemnly rendered to 
them all that homage which constitutes divine worship. In this 
deplorable blindness of the Gentiles, the Creator was forgotten ; 
Providence was annihilated ; and God had neither altars nor 
adorers. Such was the worship and the crime of idolatry. 

Both have ceased together with it, wherever the light of Jesus 
Christ has penetrated ; and in the worship, which he substituted 
for that of idols, God alone has his adorers, temples, altars, and 
sacrifice. How impenetrable soever may be his decrees, we con- 
fess that every thing happens in the universe by his providence I 
that he has created every thing, that he governs and supports 
every thing by his almighty hand, without which his creatures 
would return to their original nothing. " To Him belongs sov- 
ereign praise ; to Him alone the acknowledgment of an abso- 
lute and all-powerful empire, and homage for the existence re- 
ceived, not only for that which makes us men, but for that also 

tion to produce an exact resemblance of them : witness the statue of Ceres, which 
Verres had the audacity to remove from its temple, which was such a statue that, 
by Cicero's account* " those who held it, believed that they saw the goddess her- 
self, or her effigy fallen from heaven, and not made by the hand of man;" witness 
again the famous Olympian Jupiter, to which Phidias imparted such majesty that 
be h:t<l rendered it more adorable, aud that the grandeur of the work equalled that 
of the god, according to the saying of Quiutillian.f The prince of statuaries 
had executed it on the ideas of Homer, the great theologian of Grecian mythology, 
the incomparable poet, who of all men had spoken most nobly of the gods, and 
in whom nevertheless not a word is found that might lead us to suspect that he 
thought of any thing incorporeal. 

" Hesiod," says Eusebius,} "was of opinion that there were not less than 30,000 
goda upon the earth. For my part I find a still greater number of creators 
amongst men, both in wood and in stone." Has it not been wittily said, by an 
ancient, speaking of Rome, that there were in that city more divinities than men? 
What would have become of us then, if it had not been tor Christianity ? 

•Art. 111. against Verres. tlnst. Oiat. LXII. JKvang. Prep. C. XV. 13. V. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 525 

which make us saints and agreeable to our Creator." ' They who 
acknowledged that there is nothing in man but what God has 
given ; no grace or power but what he has deigned to impart, can 
never be supposed to believe that of their own strength and power 
the saints descend and animate the statues and images representing 
them. Did ever a Catholic artist, employed in producing one or the 
other, imagine that he was working the habitation of a demigod? 2 
Did ever a Catholic nation entreat the blessed spirits to descend into 
the statues prepared for them, or to forsake them on the approach 
of a profane and victorious party ? 3 Alas ! to what questions are we 
compelled to stoop, to repel this too shameful comparison instituted 
between the respect paid to our images and the worship of idols? 
You will discover still further, Sir, the difference between the 
two, when you become better acquainted with the reasons that in- 
duce us to admit images into our Churches, and with the use we 
make of them. Some represent to us the facts of sacred history, 
sometimes the beneficent and miraculous works of our Saviour, 
sometimes the actions, the combats, and trials of his martyrs ; and 
then they refresh the memory of them in those who had known 
them before, or they teach them to those who, being unable to 
read, had till then been ignorant, of them. For painting speaks, 
to every eye, and is understood by the rudest mind : 4 it is the only 
book of the ignorant, and is also the book of cultivated minds, 
who relish its expressions with exquisite sensibility. Both the 
one and the other find subjects of edification and a fund of pious 
meditations and religious sentiments ; and all, after attentively 
surveying them, must return better instructed and better disposed. 
Sometimes the painting, that represents but one person, recalls to 
our mind a whole life of virtues and good deeds. By catching 
our eye it captivates our attention and steals upon our heart. Is 
it our Saviour himself? We prostrate in spirit with profound 

'Bo?-iu'f ••■• (Mm, tiuncus cram. ..cum fober ineertus scamnum faceretne Pria- 
j.uin raaluit ease denm." Hor. 

:: \\'li"n a place had been consecrated, and they were desirous to desecrate it. the 
genii were with great solemnity conjured to retire: ;ni«l when a town was about 
t-i be taken bj assault, their guardian pods were besought to depart, and go over 
10 Hi.' camp of the conqueror, where they would be better served. 

« " Solet enim etiam piotnra tacens in parietibus loqui, plurimumque prodesse." 
Greg, Jfj IB. 



526 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

adoration ; we implore his mercies and his graces. Is it his 
blessed mother, one of his martyrs or saints ? We represent them 
to ourselves such as they were upon earth, such as they are in 
heaven ; we unite ourselves to them, to thank God for the graces, 
with which he has favored them ; we beg them to unite with us 
in asking of God those graces of which we stand in need. Thus 
do we pass from the image to the original, from the original to 
our Creator, who is always the term of our thoughts, the only 
object to which we tend, the principal, and even, eventually, the 
only object that attracts our prayers and animates all our worship. 
What a pitiable allegation, to pretend that we confine our 
thoughts and prayers to the canvas or the marble ! Know, Sir, 
that our ideas go far beyond : The visible inanimate matter con- 
ducts us to the real but invisible object : the latter is the term ; 
the former the natural means of arriving at it. How should they 
fall into this kind of idolatry, who especially honor the apostles 
and the first martyrs, for having combated and destroyed it ; they 
who in their holy solemnities sing with the Royal Prophet : ' ' Let 
them be all confounded, who adore graven things, and who glory 
in their idols." Ps. 96. v. 7. — How is it possible to suspect 
those, whom the Church ' forbids to put any confidence in images, 
or to offer up any prayer to them, because they possess no power 
or virtue whatsoever ? We make use of statues and paintings, 
because man, being composed of body and soul, stands in need 
of sensible objects to awaken the affections of his heart, and fix 
the mobility of his mind : we place them honorably in the house 
of God, because the subjects they represent to us are his friends 
and servants, and the sentiments with which they inspire us 
powerfully lead us to him ; we suffer, when ignorance and fanati- 
cism insult the representations of our Redeemer or of the saints, 
and this, with much more reason no doubt, than loyal and faithful 
subjects lament to see insensate revolt overthrowing the statue of 
a respected sovereign, or of a beloved minister. For the rest, a 
mere glance is sufficient for passing to the original, to which our 
thoughts, prayers and affections arc turned ; and if it were pos- 
1 Counc. of Trent, Scss. XXV. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 527 

sible in human language always to express ourselves witn rigor- 
ous precision, instead of the worship of images, we ought to say, 
the worship of the saints in the presence of their images. For, 
again it must be observed, 1 there is nothing in our honors, ven- 
eration and prayers, but what is entirely referred to the originals.* 
Enlightened Protestant theologians have not been wanting to 
justify us from the reproaches of idolatry, or of prevarication 
against the divine law. They have acknowledged that our 
principles were really free from both. Still however they would 
suppress images, because, say they, if for the well instructed 
they are unobjectionable, it is at least to be feared that they will 
draw the ignorant and stupid multitude into idolatry. Incapable 
of rising above their senses, they naturally must confine them- 
selves to the image, suppose some inherent virtue therein, give 
it their confidence, and address to it their prayers. This seems 
to me the most reasonable objection that can be opposed to this 
part of our worship. I should consider it to be decisive, if the 
danger, on which the objection entirely rests, were as real as they 
seem to imagine. For idolatry is so abominable before God, that 
nothing should be neglected to guard the people against it: and 

1 " Imaginis cnim honor in prototypum resultat." — Cone. 11. Nic. act. VII. 

2 God has often granted miraculous cures to fervent prayers made in presence 
of images. He has performed tli.-m to display the glory of the saints, and to 

I iense the faith and piety of those, who had ardently solicited their interces- 
sion. The report of a miracle soon spreads abroad, it brings the place and the 
image into public notice ; the image from that time is called miraculous; this is 
a received expression, but too concise to give with exactitude the correct idea to 
be formed of it. This image is only miraculous inasmuch as a miracle has been 
wrought by God before it. The miracle is not attributable to the place, because 
it miirlit equally have happened any where else ; nor to any virtue peculiar to the 

. because it has no more than any other image; and because according to 
the doctrine of the t'hurch, there is no such virtue inherent in any image. It is 
therefore to be attributed to the gratuitous lavor of God, and to the dispositions 
of the petitioner; above all, to that lively and strong faith, which is the soul of 
prayer and formi it- meril ami excellency. 

Par from disapproving of the conduct of those, who undertake a pilgrimage to 
visit any particular image, renowned for Borne miraculous occurrence, I consider 
it to be very praiseworthy, if piety instigate such conduct. It is certain thattbo 
remembrance of what has passed before this image, the Bight of the places even 
which have witnessed it. must contribute to rouse fervor; and each one may 
humbly hope the like favor by asking it with the like dispositions. 



528 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

if images led them to it, certainly there should be no hesitation 
in suppressing them. The sacrifice would be so much the more 
indispensable, as we have never considered them to be necessary. 
Those missionaries would • undoubtedly be very imprudent, who, 
beginning to establish themselves amongst infidels, should ex- 
pose images in their rising Church. There would be too much 
reason to fear that Neophytes would consider them something 
similar to the images they had till then been accustomed to be- 
hold. For it is difficult to become entirely divested of the im- 
pressions of infancy and education. This perhaps was the motive 
which suggested to the Fathers of the ancient Council of Elvira 
the prohibition to paint upon the walls of the Churches any image 
of Him, whom we ought to adore. The faithful of that country 
(Spain) were undoubtedly but too recently converted from idola- 
try, which still was prevailing around them. Perhaps also, for 
the same reason, the apostles and their first successors did not 
make use of images. Their great object was to destroy idolatry, 
and to break every bond, by which men had been attached to it. 
An appearance, a more shadow, would have sufficed to recall 
ideas, which example and habit had left impressed upon their 
minds : and in order to root them out efficaciously, prudence re- 
quired that no image should be presented to their devotion. 1 

But when the idols were overthrown, when the people, now 
become Christians, had thoroughly learned, on the one hand, the 
absurdity of addressing inanimate matter, statues without eyes 
to see, and without ears to hear, on the other, the abomination 
of substituting them for the Creator or Sovereign master : what 
danger could there then be in inviting them to fix their eyes, 
either on the image of Christ, in order to become more penetrated 

1 Besides this reason, which alone should be sufficient, one cannot see how the 
first Christians hunted out and put to death for their religion, could, without 
exposing themselves to be discovered, have executed statues or paintings ; or where 
they could have placed them at the time when they had neither Basilicks nor 
Chapels ; when, obliged to conceal their assemblies from the knowledge of their 
persecutors, they met sometimes in one house, and sometimes in another, and not 
un frequently in subterraneous vaults in the Catacombs. They were then com- 
pelled to confine themselves to what was absolutely necessary for the celebration 
of the sacred worship ; and images were not necessary. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 529 

with the sentiments of love and adoration due to his divine per- 
son, or on that of an apostle or martyr, in order to form, as far 
as possible, an idea of the original, to honor his virtues, his 
courage and constancy, and to ask his intercession ? And now 
that Christianity has for so many ages prevailed amongst us, 
what danger would they see iu images, when the faithful learn 
from their infancy that it is forbidden, " to ask any favor of them, 
or put any confidence in them :'" when they are brought up to 
believe that "there is in images no inherent virtue, for which 
they ought to be revered ;" 2 that they are merely adapted to ex- 
cite in us the remembrance of the originals ; and that if we 
prostrate or bend the knee before them, it is entirely to the origi- 
nal, that is, to Jesus Christ, or his saints, that this suppliant 
posture must be referred : to Jesus Christ, for the purpose of 
adoration; to the saints, for that of veneration. Where can be 
found the least peril in all this ? How is idolatry to enter into 
minds fortified by so simple and reasonable a doctrine? Again, 
supposing this danger were to be apprehended, is it to be sup- 
posed that we should have stood in need to be admonished of it 
by those, who have so improperly called themselves reformers, 
or reformed ? The Church would have been the first to take 
alarm and forbid a practice become dangerous: it is she, who 
holds the deposit of Revelation, she who preserves and transmits 
it, in all its integrity, by the divine assistance which never shall 
be wanting bo her; and it is she therefore alone whom we must 
hear. What then does she say? That " it is good and useful 
to have and to keep iu the temples the images of Jesus Christ 
and hi- saints." 3 After this, what importance can we attach to 
;it dangers which prejudiced persons imagine they dis- 
cover'.' W'c can do bo otherwise than regard them as imaginary 
and chimerical. 

Bear, I pray, Sir, what a greal Pope* wrote to a Bishop of 
Marseilles, who with inconsiderate zeal had destroyed the images 
of the Bainte, under the pretext that they must not be adored, 

i Coonc. of Trent, Sess. WW. » Ibid. Sere. \'W. 'Second council of Nioe. 
•St. Urejr. the G\ it, Epi i. t- Serenas, an. 



530 OX THE CHURCH OF EXULAXD 

"If you had forbidden them to be adored, we should only have 
to praise you. But we blame you for haviug broken them. Till 
me, my brother, have you ever heard that any priest ever-did 
what you have done? If by nothing else, you ought at least to 
have been restrained by the consideration that you were not the 
only saint, the only prudent person among your brethren : it is 
one thing to adore the painting, another thing to learn from it 
what we must adore. What Scripture shews to those who can 
read, that painting shews to the illiterate who can only look." 
After having pointed out what he should have done, the learned 
pontiff teaches him what method he should adopt to instruct his 
people, and to bring them back to the use of images without 
danger. The whole of this letter is admirable, truly pastoral, 
and worthy of the noble mind from which it emanated. 

Such is the language that Zuinglius, Calvin, and their disei- 
ples would have held, if they had been really desirous of pro- 
moting religion by a prudent reformation. They would not have 
sought for models among heretics of the eighth century ; they 
would have disdained to copy the furious invectives and outrages 
of the insensate Copronymus and his servile clergy ; they would 
have blushed to adopt the extravagant notions of what was most 
contemptible in the world, I mean ignorant Jews and Mahome- 
tans. But by developing the just ideas that should be formed 
respecting images, by condemning the negligence of the pastors, 
who perhaps at that time did not give their flocks the necessary 
instruction, they would have entered into the views of the Church 
and her Councils. They would have removed abuses and dan- 
gers, and maintained sound principles and peace in the world, 
instead of filling it with calumnious declamations, with tumult, 
devastation and profanation. I like to believe, Sir, that there 
is no reasonable and Christian person, of whatever communion, 
who does not deplore the scenes which Iconoclast fury has re- 
newed since the Reformation ; no one who can at this day refuse 
h'B regret for the loss of monuments, equally as precious for the 
arts as for piety. To deplore these outrages is not sufficient: 
they ought to be repaired as far as possible, and the respect and 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 531 

honor, which your ancestors so unjustly took away from images, 
should be restored to them. What is to be feared by the more 
general adoption in your Church of the sound principles of ours ? 
They need only to be exposed in their simplicity. Being plain 
and intelligible they can contain neither poison nor danger for 
the people ; particularly amongst you, and all Protestant socie- 
ties, with whom even possible abuses in the worship of images 
are so carefully exposed. When once it is proved and conceded 
that no divine law forbids it and that simple instruction may 
prevent all abuse and danger, it would be reasonable to embrace 
the advantages it offers. Who is ignorant of the admirable 
effects of painting? Who has not felt its charm and its power? 
Where is the man so gross, so unfortunately organized, as never 
to have experienced the impression, which it has at all times 
made on sensible, enlightened and generous minds? "Appear 
now," cried out in former times an eloquent orator, 1 "appear, 
ye admirable painters ! Let your pencils give the last finish to a 
subject, which I have only been able to sketch! By the magic 
of your colors bring boldly forward upon your canvas the 
crowned champion, whom I have but feebly penciled. Surpassed 
by the expression, that you will give to the combats and the 
triumphs of the Martyr, I shall withdraw, cheerfully yielding 
the palm to your talents." 

Another orator 2 living about the same time, in a discourse 
pronounced at Constantinople, described as follows, a painting 
of the sacrifice of Abraham. "I have often seen it, but never 
without shedding tears, because art represented so correctly to 
the eye that terrible scene, that one seemed to be present at it. 
[saae is OS hie knees before the altar, with his hands bound be- 
hind his back. The father approaches, seizes with his left hand 
the locks <>f his bod, drags him towards him, bends over the head 
of his child, who turns round and casta on Ins rather a look of 
anguish and despair. Abraham raises his right arm to strike; 
the edge of the Bword has juBt reached the body, when it is 
checked in its progress by the voioe, thai has jusl been heard 
'Si. Ji;i-ii. Disc, "ii the Hart Barluam. 'St, Greg. Syu, 



532 on the cm iicu ov England 

from the heavens." St. Augustin praises in high terms a beau- 
tiful composition on the same subject; and in a sermon for the 
feast of St. Stephen, he gives an account of a painting, in which 
his martyrdom was represented. The Jews were putting him to 
death; at a distance, Saul was keeping their clothes, and under 
a shower of stones Stephen was still preserving the most ravish- 
ing features of composure and sweetness. Shall we here for- 
get the painting, to which Mary of Egypt was indebted for the 
tears of repentance, and the crown of heaven '? Seduced from 
the age of twelve years in Alexandria, this weak female had 
there pursued, for some years, the course of her disorders. She 
becomes desirous of changing the scene of her wickedness; she 
passes to Jerusalem ; here an immense concourse of people were 
assembled to celebrate the feast of the exaltation of the true 
cross. In the midst of her follies, she still would go with the 
crowd, to contemplate the very wood, which saw the Son of God 
expire and saved the world. Already was she entering the 
Church of Calvary, when, all at once, she finds herself held 
back by an invisible power, which she tries in vain to resist. 
She retires in astonishment, perceives in the porch an image of 
the blessed Virgin, eyes it with fixed attention, reads in it all the 
shame and horror of her conduct, falls upon her knees, melts 
iuto tears, and devotes herself to the penitential austerities of a 
desert. There she terminates a long life of penance by a death, 
the account of which affects us even unto tears. 

What need is there to expatiate upon the power of ancient 
paintings, to seek after models which no longer exist, whilst we 
find some so very near our own times *? I have under my eyes a 
mere engraving, executed according to the design of Frere Gir- 
ardon. It represents our Saviour upon the cross, his mother and 
St. John raising their eyes with a look of resignation ; as if to 
offer their sacrifice to heaven ; on the other side of the cross, 
Magdalene sitting with clasped hands, with disheveled hair, and 
the keenest anguish expressed in every feature the most hardened 
sinner could not, for two minutes, steadfastly contemplate this 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 533 

affecting representation, without feeling the pangs of remorse in 
his breast. 

Perhaps in your travels, you may have remarked at Potsdam, 
the bust of a Christ crowned with thorns. Never was I so 
struck with any composition. Our Saviour" suffers with great 
fortitude, but not like other men. The anguish that he feels, 
and the extreme thirst produced by it are so exclusively appro- 
priate to Jesus Christ that they are referable to Him alone. It 
is the suffering of a God-man ; the two natures are, if I may be 
allowed the expression, here visible. This master-piece appeared 
to me to be the last effort of genius ; it is Raphael's. Who has 
not heard of the communion of St. Jerome ? The venerable 
Cenobite, almost a centenarian, bent down in adoration even 
more than with the weight of years, his feeble hands humbly 
joined, but his eye enkindled by faith; the august and imposing 
majesty of the pontiff, who advances towards him with the con- 
secrated host in his hand, and the assistant priests, struck with 
religious awe ; in this sublime composition every thing announces 
the loftiness of the mysteries, every thing bespeaks the presence 
of God concealed under the sacred species. A Calvinist pencil 
would never trace out any thing equal to this. 1 

I will say no more upon the happy effects of painting, lest I 
should weaken by my words what I am enabled to feel much bet- 

1 Kurope in these our days, swarms with designers and painters: and notwith- 
standing posterity will be astonished to find so few paintings produced in an age, 
when bo m.in ;. are manufactured. In order to produce eminent painters, it is not 
suflicient to place before their eyes the mosl finished models, to multiply exhibi- 
tions, and enhance the vain • of them : in addition to this, and above all things, 
it Is necessary to cultivate the soul ; and 1 oan discover in them no sign that they 
little of any deficiency in this partionlar. And yet it is from the soul that 
grand conceptions arise, and it is above all, from divine revelation, that the soul 
derives them; for there is nothing beautiful or sublime but troth. If the cele- 
brated masters, who, informer ages, carried painting to such perfection, had not 
i a more Christian education than if given now-a-days, how many master^ 
t ir-pieces would never have Been the light '.' 1 Bpeak here only of principles, and 
nut of moral-, which too often but ill correspond with them. No artist, irreli- 
gious from Ignorance, or indifferenl from example, \v ill ever riBB to the grand and 
.sublime. He will perhaps excel in correcto of d sign, and in the blending of 
colon; be may catch a likeness, and may describe, with more or less su 
empassioned scenes, battlea, animals, flowers, landscapes. But never expect from 
1 i 



53-4 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

ter than to express. I pity the Protestant societies, which, dis- 
covering abuses where none exist, and dangers where we see 
none, sacrifice to prejudices and chimerical fears the real advan- 
tages, which images and paintings present in the way of instruc- 
tion and piety. Why not lay before the ignorant the only book 
they can read, and before well-instructed persons the remem- 
brance of facts and persons, that they are so liable to forget *? 
Why not strike sinners by objects, which create remorse within 
them and lead tham to virtue, by their silent reproaches? Why 
not console the faithful, by presenting examples and motives for 
their encouragement? In fine, why deprive them of so rich and 
varied a fund of salutary reflections, and of support in the trials 
of life ; and deprive them of the inexhaustible and natural nour- 
ishment of a feeling devotion? I could wish, for our separated 
brethren, that they would resolve upon making the experiment. 
I would engage that their Churches should not be loaded with 
images and paintings, as some of ours are. T would even go so 
far as to advise their being more sparing of them, provided they 
would exercise proportionate taste in the selection of them. 1 

him compositions resembling those which I have mentioned. Whence should he 
derive such characters ? He can form no conception of them. How should he 
give to the human face a celestial expression, when he has not even an idea of it? 
It must be allowed that modern foolish philosophy, full of self-sufficiency, and 
void of sense, has not been less fatal to the fine arts than to good morals. By 
confining man's attention to the earth, it has narrowed his mind, and 'I 
heart; it has extinguished both genius and taste. When man once becomes a 
mere animal, he will naturally and necessarily crawl upon the earth. 

1 If the Reformers had confined themselves to complaining that our Churches 
are frequently overloaded with wretched representations, which far from exciting 
piety, distress the eye, I would willingly have passed my condemnation upon such 
an abuse. It is easy to defend our representations on principles of theology, but 
not always on principles of taste. A number of small altars, affixed to the pil- 
lars of a great basilick, and also of wretched sculptures of wood gilded or sil- 
vered over: a crowd of angelic but far from aerial figures, clumsily and heavily 
placed about the altar or the pulpit, sometimes encumber beautiful edifices, de- 
tract from the majestic simplicity and the noble proportions, which the art ist had 
produced. Too frequently the paintings are so rudely daubed, are crowded with 
such extravagant embellishments, that in very truth we are compelled to turn 
OUT eyes away from them. It is to be regretted that there has been given to them 
in the Churches, a place of honor, which ought to have been reserved for works 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. OOO 

But if such powerful reasons should not yet suffice to persuade 
them, let them yield to example at least and to the voice of an- 
tiquity. For to pretend, as some have done, that it neither knew 
nor made use of images, is to hetray a very superficial knowledge 
of its belief and practice, or a want of fair dealing towards us. 
He who is not a stranger to the monuments of the first ages, 
must candidly acknowledge that images are discovered near the 
apostolic times, that they are found to have been held in honor 
and veneration, as soon as it was possible they should be, that 
is, after the fall of idolatry and the end of the persecutions, 
when all apprehensions were banished. Then the Christians 
were permitted to have public temples, and with the first basilicks 
appeared the images of Jesus Christ, and his mother and the 
saints. 

Will they who dispute the fact of these representations being 
in ancient times venerated in the Church, pretend to know more 
about those distant periods than the celebrated Photius, whose 
vast erudition is still so much admired, and who, in a single 
work 1 gives us the analysis of 480 ecclesiastical writers, who for 
the most part are not come down to us ? Now this learned man 
treats the heresy of the Iconoclasts as barbarous, and testifies 
that the second council of Nice 2 " unanimously decided and con- 
firmed, 00 the traditions of the apostles and holy fathers, that 
the image of Jesus Christ, our Lord, was to be respected, in 
honor of him whom it represented." Will they pretend to pos- 
sesa respecting the first ages of the Church, information more 
certain and extensive than the Fathers of the eighth general 

of superior merit. I know that master-pieces are rarely to be found : but copies 
of them may be multiplied, and these copies would be always preferable to com- 
potations which fall below mediocrity. 

The ancient Church would have rejected the greater pari of our paintings and 
sculptures : neither should we have seen them, I venture to assert it, if the bish- 
opi had been n ine them before their admission. The council 

of Trent, and afterwards the Synods held at Milan, under St. Charles, at Col 
at Paris, &c. make it a dutj in them to exclude every represi atation, the execu- 
tion of wbi'-li should not correspond n ith the dignity of the 01 iginal, and should 
daoted to excite the devotion of the faithful. 

1 Lil . ■ ' Can. of CEcum. Comic. C. VII. 



536 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

council? 1 "It is just according to the most ancient tradition"- 
says these Fathers, " that images should derive some lustre from 
all the honor which is rendered to their originals." "Will they 
pretend to enter into disputations with the Fathers of the seventh 
general council 2 respecting periods so remote from them ? Ob- 
serve with what confidence these Fathers appeal to the highest 
tradition, to establish the honor paid to sacred images, and lay 
the basis of their decisions on the principles I have elsewhere 
developed, principles which have ensured and will for ever ensure 
the immoveable authority of the Church. They deliver them in 
these terms: "We unanimously declare that we wish to keep 

the traditions received and consecrated by Scripture or custom 

Walking in this royal way, and being firmly supported by the 
doctrine of the holy Fathers, by the tradition of the Catholic 

Church, in which the Spirit of God resides we define that 

images should be placed in our temples to the end that at the 

sight of these sacred representations, they who behold them may 
transport to their prototypes their mind, their thoughts and 
desires." 

Would our modern iconomachs have dared to call images a 
novelty in the Church, if they had remarked this passage of St. 
Augustm? 3 The saint was speaking of a book of magic, which 
the pagans had attempted to attribute to Christ: " Then, consid- 
ering to which of the apostles they should make our Saviour ad- 
dress himself in this work, Peter and Paul came into their 
minds, from having often seen them, I suppose in many places 
represented in paintings together with their Divine Master." 
Would they have called images a novelty, if they had remarked 
in St. Ambrose 4 the manner in which he relates the apparition 
he had of Grervase and Protase ? "It was," says he " the third 
night : I was overcome with much watching, and rather in a kind 
of stupor than asleep : they both appeared to me, accompanied 
with a third person, who resembled blessed Paul, whose counte- 
nance I knew from the portraits I had seen of him." If they 

1 An. 869. 2 An. 787. 3 On the agreement of the Gospels, 13. 1, ch. X. « Ser- 
mon on SS. Grervase and Frotase. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 537 

had observed in the life of the great St. Basil, written by his 
successor,' the following passage: " This holy man would often 
remain standing before an image of our lady, near to which was 
also represented a celebrated martyr. He remained standing 
and in prayer, praying to be delivered from the apostate and 
impious Julian." If they had known of these words of St. 
Basil, so often quoted from him: "The honor of the image 
passes to its original ;" and the beautiful fragment of a letter 
written by this great bishop to the Emperor Julian, his former 
schoolfellow? 2 According to the Christian faith, which comes 
from God and is without spot, I believe in one only God Almighty, 

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost I receive 

the apostles, prophets and martyrs ; I invoice them, that they 
may pray for me, and that, through their intercession, God may 
be propitious to me, and may pardon my faults. For this rea- 
son I respect and honor their images, principally because we are 
instructed to do so by the tradition of the holy apostles, and be- 
cause far from such images being prohibited, they appear in our 
Churches." What more can be desired in favor of our cause, 
than to find it fixed, in the middle of the fourth century, even 
on an apostolical tradition, by the most correct theologian of the 
Greek Church? And yet we are able to refer to witnesses of 
etill greater antiquity. 

" Far be it from us Christians to adore images as gods, after 
the manner of the Greeks. 3 We confine ourselves to shewing 
our affection and love for the original, the representation of which 
is placed before us. Wherefore, when the features of the image 
an- effaced, we make no difficulty in burning as useless the wood, 
from which it had been formed." We learn from pope Damasus, 
that tinder the Pontificate of St. Silvester, 4 the Emperor Con- 
stantine erected the Basiliok bearing his name, and that among 
the magnificent presents, with which he ornamented this Chnroh, 
'• there was to be Been the Btatoe of oar 8a\ bur worked in silver, 

i Helladius, Biata. of Ci ar. an. 380. »Frag. of Bpist. CCV. quoted in 2nd. 
council i it" Nice. 'St. AiIj. in. i-Hi-. an. 330. Quest and Rep. to antioohuBj So. 
38. « An. 320. 



538 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

of the weight of a hundred and twenty pounds, seated on a chair 
of the same metal, and five feet in height : the statues also of 
the twelve Apostles, each five feet high, and weighing ninety- 
pounds, etc." Here then we have the statues of our Saviour 
and his Apostles in the first temple, that the Emperors raised to 
God. And as for paintings, them we find mentioned in St. Basil, 
whose apostrophe to painters I have given before ; in the descrip- 
tion which Gregory of Nazianzum gives of the Church built by 
his father ; for he there expressly say, that it was ornamented 
with paiutings of workmanship so finished and perfect, that they 
yielded in nothing to nature : in a description given by Gregory 
of Nyssa of a Church, in which all the scenes of the protracted 
martyrdom, endured by Theodorus, were admirably represented ; 
instruments of punishment, tortures, burning furnace, the mar- 
tyr in the flames, the horrible figures of the tyrants appearing 
by the light of the flames, and the image of Jesus Christ presi- 
ding over the combat of his generous champion, &c. 

Tertullian, impelled by the severity of his character to the 
excesses of the Montanists, reproached the Catholics for granting 
peace and absolution to adulterers, and for justifying this indul- 
gence from the parable of the good pastor, represented on the 
chalices. 1 These last words, used accidently, are become for 
posterity a ray of light and evidence. They manifestly shew 
that sacred representations were not unknown to the primitive 
Church. At a time when she had neither temples, nor fixed 
places of assembly, it would have been impossible for her to put 
up images, as she did afterwards : but she had portable ones, 
attached to the sacred vessels employed in the sacrifice, the only 
ones which could agree with her situation, then precarious and 
uncertain. Turtullian again alludes to it in the same work, 2 
where he says : ' ' Let us now produce the paintings on the 
chalices." And because at the end of the second century this 
author speaks of the paintings on the chalices, as of general 
prevalence, there will certainly be no presumption in referring 
it to the apostolical ages. 

1 Book on Chastity, ch. X. 2 lb. 7. 



AND TH3 REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 539 

I cannot conclude these quotations without adding a fact, which 
may gratify your curiosity. Eusebius 1 relates it iu these terms: 
"It is said that the woman laboring under a flux of blood, and 
miraculously cured by our Saviour, as we read in the Gospel, 
was a native of Cesarea-Philippi ; that her house is still shewn 
there ; and that, to perpetuate the remembrance of the benefit 
she had received, she had placed before her door, on a pedestal 
of stone, a brazen statue of a woman on her knees, stretching 
forth her suppliant hands ; near her, another brazen statue of a 
man clothed in a long robe, in a standing posture, with one hand 
extended towards the woman. At the foot of the man was grow- 
ing an unknown herb, which, touching the fringe of his garment, 
acquired the virtue of healing all sorts of diseases. It is posi- 
tively asserted that this statue represented Jesus Christ; and we 
can testify to its present existence, having seen it with our own 
eyes in a journey we took to Cesarea. There is nothing sur- 
prising in people, who are born among pagans, having raised 
statues to our Saviour, in gratitude for the benefit he had con- 
ferred upon them during his life, since we have seen portraits of 
the apostles Peter and Paul and of Jesus Christ, which are still 
preserved in our days. It is probably a custom derived from the 
ancient pagans, who honored in this manner their benefactors 
and protectors." In these cures, we may discover the finger of 
God, and in this miraculous herb an apology for Christian images, 
proclaimed by heaven itself. 2 Let us conclude the interesting 
BOCOfent of this celebrated monument. It existed entire in the 
time of Eusebius, who declares that he had seen it. It was de- 
stroyed by Julian the apostate, in the manner related by Sozo- 
iinn,' more than a century after Eusebius. "Julian the apos- 
tat.- having been informed that at Cesarea-Philippi was still pre- 
served the statue that had been raised to Jesus Christ by the 

i K.-.-i-. in t. b. vn. 

•'Whether (he ouree of thi< miraculous li irh arc now-a-daye admitted or not, 

it i-< mod evident, from ttfli aeooimt ofEruehioB, thai they were believed in those 

primitive times. They were, therefore, persuaded at that time, that heaven did 

doI diaapprove todiaciiminately of ili<- erecti f images. 

i Hook V. C. 20. 



540 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

woman healed of the flux of blood, sent orders to demolish it, 
and to put his own in its place. This order was executed. But 
immediately, fire from heaven struck the statue of Julian on the 
breast, and struck off the head and the neck. From that day the 
fragment has remained discolored, as a proof of its having been 
struck with lightning. The soldiers of Julian had so violently 
torn away the statue of Christ, that it had been broken. But 
the Christians, having collected the pieces, replaced the statue 
in the Church, where it is still preserved." 

The modern Iconoclasts have but too often renewed the violence 
of Julian and his satellites, whereas Catholics have always taken 
pride in praising and imitating the zeal and religious respect of 
the Christians of Cesarea. 

Let me, however, caution you Sir, not to imagine that I com- 
prise in the modern Iconoclasts all the members of the Protest- 
ant religion. The Oalvinistic societies, although they have been 
the most loud in their clamors, and the most violent in their 
hostility against images, have still furnished apologists for them: 
and Daille himself, who has written so much against us on this 
subject, has not been able to find us deserving of condemnation, 
except by palming upon us principles which never were ours. 
When he allows that they entertain for images the same venera- 
tion and respect as for the altars, the sacred vessels, and the holy 
books, without knowing it he is in perfect accordance with us. 
For we ask for them neither more respect nor veneration. All 
Lutheranism professes on this question the principles which we 
all profess. Luther and all his followers have a hundred times 
refuted the iconomachs, and justified images from the imputation 
of idolatry, or prevarications against the Decalogue. They have 
preserved them in their Churches, as monuments calculated to 
refresh the memory with holy things, and to excite sentiments 
of piety. " It is very certain that there is no virtue in images, 
and therefore that we cannot adore them nor pray before them, 
but inasmuch as they are a visible means of exciting in us the 
remembrance of Christ and heavenly things. And if we would 
adore or invoke God before an image, we must put ourselves in 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 541 

the same disposition, in which the Israelites were before the 
brazen serpent, beholding it with respect, but placing their faith 
not in the serpent but in God." Do you not imagine that you 
have just been hearing the words of a Catholic writer? Know 
however that it is the learned Molanus whom you have heard, 
the oracle of the Lutherans in the last century. " He said that 
they would easily agree upon this article, by retrenching the 
abuses which moderate Catholics do not approve of;" he might 
have added : and which the council of Trent condemns, and or- 
ders to be suppressed. 

I should have no difficulty in producing distinguished divines 
of your Church also, who have spoken in praise of images. In 
the first place, I know of none who disapprove of them as his- 
torical subjects relating to religion ; some have made no difficulty 
in making use of them. The learned bishop Montague declares 
in his Appeal, C. XXI. that they are of great use in exciting 
emotions of piety, and that there is no doubt, for example, that 
we remember more feelingly, and are more effectually empas- 
passioned with the death, blood-shed and bitter passion of our 
Saviour, when we see that history fully and lively represented 
to us in colors, or worked by a skilful hand. "The pictures of 
Christ," says he again, "the blessed Virgin and saints, may be 
made, had in houses, set up in Churches ; the Protestants use 
them ; they despight them not. Respect and honor may be given 
unto them : the Protestants do it, and use them for helps for piety, 
in re-memoration, and more effectual representation, of the pro- 
totype." (Gagger, p. 318. and Appeal, c. XXI.) He says 
again in the Contents, "That images may effect the minds of 
religious men, by representing unto them the actions of Christ 
and his .saints ; in which regard," continues he, "all reverence 
simply cannot be abstracted from them." Other doctors have 
held among you the same language. Your archbishop Laud, 
was for reverence, not only before and towards, but to the altar; 
as we learn from a speech of his delivered in the Star-Chamber, 
the 14th of June, 1G37. In it he thus addressee die Lords of 
the Garter. " I hope a poor Priest may worship God with as 
4G 



642 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

lowly reverence as you do, since you are bound by your order, 
and by your oath, according to a constitution of Henry the fifth 
(as appears in Libro Nigro Windesoriensi) to give due honor and 
reverence Domino Deo, et Altari ejus, in modum virorum Eccle- 
siasticorum ; that is, to the Lord your God, and to his Altar : 
(for there is a reverence due to that too, though such as comes 
far short of divine worship) and this in the manner as ecclesias- 
tical persons both "worship and do reverence." (p. 49.) Now, 
if this honor may be allowed to the very altar, why not to the 
images of Christ, and in proportion, to those also of saints? It 
seems to me, Sir, that the authorities and reason I have presented, 
ought to be quite sufficient to remove your ancient prejudices 
against images, and fully to justify the honors which, among us, 
are paid to them on account of their originals. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 543 

LETTER XVII. 

On the Cross. 

After having disposed of so many controverted points, it is, 
in truth, a lamentable circumstance, that between us and you, 
there should still remain a difficulty to be surmounted. On the 
one hand, I am reduced to ask of you the reason of those injuries 
which are offered to the cross of my Saviour ; and, on the other 
hand, I find it necessary to justify before Christians those honors 
which we render to that distinctive badge of Christianity. I 
have traversed your country in all directions : and I have never 
perceived in any part of it the consolatory sign, which advertises 
a Christian stranger that he is travelling in a country of brethren. 
Your reformation has not spared the cross : every where has it 
cast that holy symbol to the ground. Would it be deemed in- 
compatible with the cross : or has it acted under the often-con- 
futed pretext of superstition and idolatry ? Has England then 
forgotten, that she was delivered from idolatry by the cross, and 
that her first apostles came with that sacred standard in their 
hand to liberate her from her errors and her idols ? You will tell 
me that England has not forgotten the cross : for she still retains 
it in the administration of baptism. Much honor, in good sooth, 
do you confer upon the cross ! Nothing remained, save to ex- 
clude, from the sacrament which makes us Christians, the sign 
by which we shew that we are Christians. And yet let us thank 
the divine mercy, that it has not been altogether obliterated 
among you. Perhaps the use of the cross in baptism, which you 
still retain, may eventually lead you to re-establish it in the 
credit and honors of which your ancestors have so unjustly 
despoiled it. 

In fact, by what right did they remove it from the temples 
and altars, and pull it down in town and country? By \v!i t 
right did they forbid Christians to arm themselves, in temptation . 
with this salutary sign, and sign themselves with it in the criti- 



544 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

cal occurences of life, and above all, at the awful approach of 
death ? What could they mean by so doing ? Did they know 
what they were about *? Were they aware that by banishing the 
cross and abolishing the use of it, they were ronounciug primi- 
tive customs, and the golden age of Christianity ? By their 
account, their object was to revive it, to establish themselves most 
firmly upon antiquity, and, by a wise reformation, to restore the 
Church to her own original beauty and purity. So they said ; 
and so, if you wish it, they believed ; but, if they did believe 
it, their knowledge of Christian antiquity must have been scanty 
indeed. They could not have read these passages from St. 
Augustin 1 among many others of the same Father : ' ' The sign 
of the cross is a rampart to friends, an obstruction to enemies. 
By it commences the instruction of the catechumens, by it the 
baptismal fonts are consecrated, by it the baptised receive with 
the imposition of hands all the gifts of the Holy Spirit ; by it 
the basilicks are dedicated, the altars consecrated ; the sacraments 
administered ; by it again the priests, the levites are promoted 
to holy orders : in a word, there is no sacrament in the Church 
which is not conferred by the mysterious virtue of this sign." 
If a catechumen is asked : 2 Do you believe in Christ ? he replies : 
Yes : and instantly makes the sign of the cross : he describes it, 
and carries it on his forehead, and is not ashamed." They could 
not have read this advice of St. Jerome : 3 ' ' Keep the door of 
your heart shut : frequently make on your forehead the sign of 
the cross, that the exterminator of Egypt may have no hold upon 
you." They could not have read these words of St. Ambrose.* 
" The sign of Christ is on our forehead, and in our heart: on 

the forehead, to confess him always, in our heart to love him 

We ought, on awaking, to give thanks to Christ, and to begin 
the labors of the day by the sign of our Saviour." They could 
not have read the beautiful verses of Lactantius on the crucifix, 
and on the power of the sign of the cross to reduce the oracles 
to silence, nor could they have heard of these words of Tertul- 

1 Sermon on the Saints. 2 Second Treatise on St. John. 3 Epist. to Demet. 
Sermon XLV. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 545 

lian 1 to his wife, to deter her from ever marrying an unbeliever: 
" Will you conceal from him your faith, when you shall make 
the sign of the cross upon your humble couch and on your fee- 
ble body ?" or this passage again : 2 ' ' Whenever we move : when 
we enter and go out : in dressing, in washing : at table, when 
we retire to rest, during conversation — we impress on our fore- 
heads the sign of the cross — Should you ask for the Scripture 
authority for this and such like practices : I answer, there is 
none : but there is tradition that authorizes it, custom that con- 
firms it, submission that observes it." Here is quite sufficient 
to convict the reformers of gross ignorance respecting the ancient 
monuments of the Latin Church. 

It shall now be our task to prove, that they were equally 
ignorant of the monuments of the Greek and Oriental Churches. 
Hear first St. Chrysostom : 3 "This object of malediction abomi- 
nation, this symbol of capital punishment, the cross, is become 

more illustrious than diadems and crowns And for this reason 

you find it among princes and their subjects, men and women, 
virgins and married people, slaves and freemen. All impress 
this sign upon the most noble part of the human face. For upon 
our forehead, as upon a column, it is every day inscribed. Thus 
do we behold it shining on the sacred table at the priestly ordi- 
nations Every where is the cross displayed, every where is it 

honored, in the houses, in the public place, in the deserts, on 
the ways, on the mountains and hills, in the valleys, on the seas 
and vessels, on our habits, beds, arms, vessels of gold and silver, 

on the paintings of our walls We are far from being ashamed 

of the cross, because it was in former times an instrument of the 
most disgraceful death : we deem it to be an ornament superior 
to diadems, crowns, and necklaces of pearls or diamonds." 

Not to accumulate here from St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gre- 
gory of Nazianzum, and St. Epiphanius various passages which 
are too long for our present purpose : Protect yourself," says St. 

<B. IF. to his wife, Ch. V. - Jh Corona Milit. C. III. IV. :t Demonstration 
agaiiut the Gentiles. 

40* 



546 ON THIS CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Ephrem, 1 " with the sign of the cross, as with a shield ; and this, 
not only with your hand, but with your mind. Employ it in 
your studies, on going out, on returning home, when retiring to 
rest, and on risiug in the morning. Bless the places where you 
walk by this sign in the . name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost. It is an armor of solid metal, which if you carry, 
nothing can harm you. See you not that he who carries any 
mark whatever of a terrestial king can never be touched ? How 
much more reason have we to fear nothing whilst we carry the 
badge of the Sovereign Master of heaven." Listen to the in- 
structions which St. Cyril of Jerusalem gave to his catechumens, 
similar to which no doubt were given in every Church. "Be 
not ashamed of the cross : if any one conceal it, do you make it 

openly on your forehead Eating, drinking, entering or leaving 

your houses, on retiring to rest, when rising up. make with con- 
fidence the sign of the cross upon your forehead Christ tri- 
umphed over the devils by the cross : boldly display the sign of 
it. On seeing it, they will remember Him that was crucified : 
they fear him, who has crushed under his feet the head of the 
dragon." St. Basil, 2 after giving the discourse of the martyr 
G-ordius, adds : " Having said this, the combatant of Jesus Christ 
arms himself with the formidable sign of the cross, and then, 
with great firmness of soul and an intrepid countenance, and 
without changing his color, he joyfully advances to meet his pun- 
ishment." " In the midst of the incantations of the devil," says 
St. Athanasius, 3 " only let the sign of the cross which the gen- 
tiles ridicule, be used ; let Christ be merely named ; the devils 
will be instantly put to flight : the oracles be silent : and all the 
arts of magic be reduced to nothing." "For," says Origen, 4 
such is the power of the cross, that by placing it before our eyes, 
1 On the spiritual armor. — Compare these passages with what was said by 
Theodore Beza, and you will lament to find the deplorable perversion of ideas 
which fanaticism can produce even in a man of talent and sense. " I confess." 
said he, " that 1 feel a horror in my soul against the crucifix. It describes to me 
the cruelty of the Jews against Christ : and for that reason T cannot endure the 
sight of it." As if the crucifix did not still more describe to him the infinite love 
of Jesus expiring for him, for us, and even for his executioners. -On the mar- 
tyrdom of GordinS. 3 On the incarnation. ' Horn. IV. un Ep. to the Rom. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 547 

and by fixing our attention upon it, so as to consider with the 
eyes of the mind the death of our Saviour, neither concupiscence, 
lust, nor envy can prevail against us. At the sign of the cross j 
the whole of this carnal troop of sin takes to flight." — "Who 
would not be struck with astonishment," exclaims Eusebius 1 " at 
the consideration that all who have believed in Christ, have made 
use of the salutary sign of the cross, and that God in former 
times had announced this by his prophet : 2 They shall come and 
shall see my glory ; and I will set up a sign among them ?" — 
" At the hour of prayer," says Justin, 3 " we turn towards the 
east, and immediately with our right hand we sign ourselves, in 
the name of Christ, with the sign which is so necessary for us." 
In consequence of this primitive and general custom, Julian, 
who had been brought up in the Church, reproached the Nazareans 
for having abandoned the religion of their ancestors, and for 
adoring instead of the shield fallen from heaven, the wood of the 
cross, and for drawing the figure of it on their foreheads, and 
applying it to the walls of their Churches. St. Cyril, far from 
denying the honors rendered to the cross, developes its utility in 
the instruction of the people, and says to him; "Would you 
then have us reject the wood, whence we derive the recollection 
of all virtue, to entertain our children and our women with the 
lying fictions of our poets." 4 It happened that the pagans ac- 
cused the first Christians of honoring all the crosses and all the 
malefactors that ever suffered on them : " Celsus," said Origen, 
"argues much in the style of certain enemies of our doctrine, 
who are foolish enough to imagine that we honor all those who 
have been fastened to the cross, because we pay homage to Jesus 
crucified." 5 The pagan Cecilius reproaches the Christians with 
adoring all crosses: No," replies Octavius, "we neither adore 
them, nor desire them." 6 For they did not adore i. e. venerate 
all indiscriminately, bnt those only which were made in imitation 
of the tru<; cross. In fine, consult the liturgies of all Churches 

' Bragg. Demonstrat. B. VI. last chapter. * Isaias, lxvi. 18. 3 Quest. CXVIII. 
an. 160. 'St. Cwil agaiiui Julian, B. VI. •'•Against Cels., IV. 11. °In Mi- 

iiutiu- Felix. 



548 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

in the fifth century : there is not one in which you will not dis- 
cover prayers and benedictions accompanied with signs of the 
cross. From this uniformity every impartial and reasonable man 
must conclude that this practice was recommended and set on foot 
by the Apostles themselves. 

It is not a little remarkable that the ancient Iconoclasts, who 
were the first among Christians to destroy and overturn images, 
always respected the cross ; and more than this :' the bishops of 
the conventicle held at Constantinople, wishing to give a sacred 
sanction to the absurd decrees it had just passed, produced the 
cross and the book of the gospels, and compelled the people to 
swear upon them, that they would forever consider images to be 
idols, and those to be idolaters who should honor them. 

I cannot resist, you will say, the phalanx of authorities you 
have arrayed against us, neither can I deny that the cross has 
been honored from the earliest times. But it seems to me that 
Catholics have passed the bounds, and, from rendering respect, ■ 
have proceeded so far as to pay adoration. At this our reformers 
have justly taken scandal; and to secure the people more effec- 
tually from this new kind of idolatry, they- have found it neces- 
sary to withdraw the object from their eyes. 

True indeed it is, Sir, that your reformers renewed against us 
the accusation which the pagans brought against our ancestors. 
These our ancestors however bave taught us how to repel such a 
charge : our faith and doctrine are the same as theirs : so likewise 
shall our reply be. We will say therefore with St. Athanasius* 
and the whole Church : ' ' But if the gentiles accuse us of paying 
our adoration to the wood of the cross, we can separate before 
their eyes the two pieces which form the cross, and after having 
thus destroyed the image, cast the two pieces to the ground and 
tread them under foot ; proving by this, that our veneration is not 
paid to the wood, but to the figure which reminds us of Him that 
was crucified." We will tell them with St. Jerome in the life 
of Paula: Prostrate before the cross, as if she still saw the 
Saviour suspended there, she adored." We will say with St. 

1 Hist, of the Icon. - Quest to Autiochus. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 549 

Gregory the Great: ""We prostrate, it is true, before the cross, 
but not as before the divinity." We will say to thein with Leon- 
tius, bishop of Napoli :' When you see Christians adoring the 
cross, know that they pay this adoration to Jesus crucified, and 
not to the wood ; and that their adoration is not directed to a 
cross they plainly evince, when, having separated the two pieces 
of wood of which it is composed, they not only refrain from ador- 
ing it, but even cast the pieces on the ground or in the fire." 
We will tell them, in fine, with St. Ambrose : 2 " Helen discovered 
the cross of our Saviour ; she adored Jesus Christ, and not the 
wood, which would have been to imitate the error of the pagans : 
but she adored him who had been suspended on this wood." 

And yet, as it is incontestable that these same Fathers and 
many others 3 have spoken of adoring the cross, and as we our- 
selves call one of the ceremonies of Good-Friday the adoration 
of the cross, we will reply to you with the Fathers of the second 
council of Nice and all well-informed and candid theologians, 
that these words adore, adoration and worship, are general ex- 
pressions, the precise signification of which depends upon the 
object that is adored ; 4 when applied to any of the persons of 

1 Cited in the 2nd Council of Nice, Act. IV. and VII. s Disc, on the death of 
Theod. 3 Helen acted with wisdom by placing the cross on the crown, in order 
that the cross of our Saviour might be adored upon the head of kings." St. 
Ambrose, Ibid. 

Flecte genu, signumque crueis venerabile adora. — Lactantiua. 

* I said that the general expressions, adore, adoration, tcornhip, are taken in 
various significations : here are some examples of them. " Abraham, as soon as 
he saw three men standing near him, ran to meet them from the door of his tent, 
and adored down to the ground, (Gen. xviii. 2.)" Lot, when he saw two angels 
who went to Sodom, "rose up and went to meet them, and worshipped prostrate 
to the ground, (Gen. xix. 1.)" "Abraham adored the people of the land, 
(Gen. xxiii. 12.)" " Juda, the sons of thy father shall adore thee, (Gen. xlix. 
8.)" It is written that David adored Saul, that Chusi adored Joab, that Achi- 
maas adored the king, that Arrena adored David, that Bethsabce adored David, 
th;it Adonia-i adored Solomon, that tin' children pf the prophets adored Kliseus, 
billing prostrate on the ground : that the Sunamite. fell at his feel and adored him: 
that all the servants of Assoeroe adored ^man, that Mardocheus alone refused to 
adore him: bo far with Illustrations from the Bible— Josephus, the historian, 
(Antio,. B. XIII.) says that the Jews of Samaria and Alexandria adored the 
temple of Garizim. Gregory of Naziauzum (Disc. XXII.) says that the mother 



550 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

the Trinity, they denote our entire dependence, the supreme do- 
minion of God, the worship of latria; but when applied to the 
saints, their relics or images, the crucifix or cross, to the altar, 
the sovereigns of their statues, &c., it is there nothing more 
than a relative veneration, a civil or religious honor. Who are 

of the Macchabees adored the members of her martyred children. St. Basil ex- 
horts to the adoration of the crib, although he elsewhere says : "It is impossible 
'or me to adore any thing created." Chronicles and histories * mention that 
Charlemagne was adored as emperor by Leo II., and that he was adored after 
the manner in which emperors were usually adored. 

From the acknowledgment of the learned of all communions, the word which, 
in Hebrew and Greek, signifies to adore, when it is applied to God, is the same 
that is employed to indicate the honor rendered to angels and men, in the passages 
of scripture that I have quoted, and in a great number of others that I have 
omitted. That the translation should be to be faithful, the word adore or wor- 
ship, adorare, should every where have been used, as the vulgate has done. 
But protestant translators, who were anxious to prevent Catholics from demon- 
strating by these passages that they were borne out by the Scripture in applying 
this expression to angels, to men, and to venerable things, have substituted in its 
place the expression to bow down before. In their first versions they had left the 
word adore, or worship, in two of these passages, where it is said of Miphiboseth 
and Joab that they adored David (II. Kings, alias II. Samuel, ch. IX). But in 
the version of 1588, which is followed now, the word has been suppressed. 
Wherever the word adore or %oorship is taken in ill part, they have not heeded to 
change it : for example, the angel rejects the honor offered by St. John (Apocal. 
ch. XIX.) and they render it by worship ; but, when the angels receive and ap- 
prove of these same honors, they render them by bow down before. It is to be 
observed however, that in all these passages the word is the same both in Greek 
and Hebrew. Why is it not the same in the protestant versions ? Is it not plain 
that their object is to excite the people against the Church, whenever they hear 
the word applied to creatures? But how pitiful is such a trick! and how despe- 
rate must that cause be, which, to preserve its ground amongst the people, is 
compelled to submit to and adopt so erroneous a version of the sacred text! — 
This remark has been made by an able writer (Desmahis) who, after having 
been a Calvinist minister, wrote against that communion a work that will never 
be refuted. 

The minister Aubertin, so much esteemed by his own party, has proved at 
considerable length from some of the examples that I have produced, and from 
others also, that '• the word adore or worship, is often employed in the sacred 
books and the writings of the Fathers, to express the veneration due to creatures 
and to religious and inanimate things ; and that it is not exclusively used to ex- 
press either civil homage or the adoration due to God." 

•"Sumraus eumdem pissul adoravit." Poet sex. See. His. of the lamo,B.W. 
Maimbourg. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 551 

better calculated to pronounce upon the sense of a general ex 
pression than those who employ it ? Do our adversaries pretend 
to know better than ourselves what we mean to express ? Is it 
not strange that they absolutely will have us to adore the wood 
of the crucifix, whilst we 'know and incessantly declare that, when 
we prostrate before it, it is Jesus Christ alone whom we adore ? 
We represent him then to our eyes and minds, and behold him 
in his image, as if he were actually present : we fall at his feet, 
kiss his wounds, and water them with our tears : less favored 
than Magdalen and Thomas, for us the scene is all in imagina- 
tion ; we can do no more. "Where is the excess in all this ? How 
can our homage and adoration be said to rest upon the sensible 
matter of the cross, whilst our mind and heart are fixed on 
Jesus Christ? 

Oh ! if the Reformers had been desirous of correcting and re- 
forming the real faults of Catholics, why did they not say to 
them on this matter : ' ' Are you not ashamed to call yourselves 
disciples of Jesus Christ, and with so much levity to abuse his 
cross ? How comes that precipitation with which you multiply 
the signs of it upon yourselves ? How comes it that the priests 
at the altar during the most august action of their ministry mako 
it, if they can be said to make it at all, with a most indecent and 
scandalous rapidity ? In such hasty and ill formed crosses, in such 
unmeaning and quickly repeated movements of the hand, how are 
we to discover either intention or form or figure ? People know not, 
scarcely can you yourselves know, what you are about. You surely 
cannot know the sacred sign that you profane : you cannot know 
that it comprises an abridged profession of your faith, the trinity of 
persons in one God, the incarnation, the sufferings and death of 
Jesus Christ, your redemption and that of the whole world. Is 
not this sufficient to make you enter into yourselves, to make you 
more deliberate in your motions, to inspire you with greater re- 
collection, and caution you to proceed to the forming of this vene- 
rable sign with becoming decorum and gravity ?" Such are the 
reproaches they should have addressed to Catholics ; reproaches, 
which unfortunately are, even to this day, too well merited. 



552 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

Catholics, feeling themselves guilty, must have replied by ac- 
knowledging their fault. But to forbid this profession of faith, 
to abolish a practice as ancient as the Church ; to forbid Chris- 
tians to employ the sign which announces Christianity, the sign 
that fortifies us against temptations and dangers, which is the 
support of the sick man at the approach of death, of the martyr 
at the sight of the sword or the faggot ; to condemn to the flames 
the crucifix, the image of our Saviour expiring upon the cross 
for us ; to pull down the cross, the trophy that forms our glory, 
and our hope, 1 the cross which saved the word, the cross which 
will judge it when it shall appear more resplendent than the 
sun ; what an inconceivable blindness ! what a delirium ! Is it 
possible that Christians should ever have so far outraged the 
principles of reason and common sense, and the feelings of na- 
ture, as to think and to act in a manner which to this day excites 
our astonishment and consternation ! 

1 " God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
Ep. to Galat. vi. 14. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 



LETTER XVIII. 

Conclusion. 

Being arrived at the term we had proposed, permit me, Sir, 
to detain you one moment longer. Let us, before we separate, 
take a retrospective view of the ground over which we have just 
passed. The Reformation, you see, made its debut into the 
world by rising up against what is called the abuses of the 
Church of Rome, against customs and dogmas unknown, it said, 
to Christian antiquity. It gave out that it was going to restore 
religion to its original purity, by removing what man had added, 
and closely adhering to the simplicity of the faith and worship 
which had been preached by the apostles and preserved during 
the illustrious ages of the Church. It gave to these ages the 
appellation of the golden age of Christianity, and understood by 
it the period comprised between the time of the apostles and the 
fourth general council inclusively, a period during which it ac- 
knowledged that faith and worship had been preserved in their 
purity, during which the greatest lights of the Church had ap- 
peared, and Jesus Christ had almost as many martyrs and saints 
as teachers and bishops. But in order to attain the noble and 
desirable end that it announced, the Reformation would hear no 
more of the authority of the Church, but complained bitterly 
that tins authority had occasioned the pernicious additions: 
thenceforth it would refer and appeal to what it should find writ- 
ten in the sacred books, being fully persuaded that the primitive 
Church exclusively attached herself to them ; and that what is 
not found in the Scriptures had been added to its belief and prac- 
tice in the ages of ignorance and corruption. Such were the 
language and prinoiples of the Reformation. 

And what has been the result? Under the pretext of lopping 
off the additions which it laid to the charge of our ancestors, it 



55 1 ON TTIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

retrenched precisely that which was believed and practiced by 
that primitive Church, to which it professed to conduct us. Of 
this you have seen certain and multiplied proofs in the length- 
ened dissertations, which I have entered into on your account. 
In fact, both the Calvinistic reformation and yours pulled down 
the cross, wherever power enabled them to do it, both reforma- 
tions forbade Christians to impress the sign of it on their fore- 
heads : and you have seen this sign much more in use among 
the first Christians than among us : you have seen the cross set 
up in those times, not only in the temples, in houses, and on the 
walls, but also upon the imperial diadem of Constantine. The 
Calvanistic reformation blushed not to pronounce as a prevarica- 
tion, and even as idolatry, the honor paid to images by placing 
them in our temples ; and you have seen them in the first 
Christian temples affixed even to the sacred vessels in the apos- 
tolic times. The Reformation treated our respect for the relics 
of the saints as superstition; it dispersed their bones and dust hi 
objects of vile idolatry : and you have seen the most ancient 
Christians devoutly collecting the remains of their martyrs, vis- 
iting their tombs, and celebrating their memory ; you have seen 
the first altars solemnly raised over their relics. 

The Reformation declared that to invoke the saints was creat- 
ing so many mediators, substituting them in the places of the 
demigods of old, and reviving a portion of paganism in the 
Christian worship; and you have heard antiquity invoke them, 
and the noblest geniuses of the golden age request their favora- 
ble intercession. The Reformation agreed in asserting that it 
was useless to pray for the dead, that it was a fond thing vainly 
invented ; that purgatory was a fiction created from interest in 
corrupt times : and you have heard the Fathers of the most il- 
lustrious ages speaking of a middle place, where souls are purged 
from their lesser stains; you have heard Christians of all com- 
munions, at the commencement of the fifth century, recite for 
the dead, in the liturgy, most fervent prayers, the origin of 
which can no where be found but in the doctrine of the apostles. 
The Reformation, as you must have observed by condemning all 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 50O 

prayers for the dead, and all invocation addressed to the blessed, 
distressingly separated the two worlds from each other, and in its 
profound conceptions, limited the communion of saints to the 
earthly and transient connexions between cotemporary individu- 
als: whereas the pure and primitive Church by giving to the 
dead its prayers, and by requesting the prayers of the blessed, 
produced a reciprocal communication between the two worlds, a 
pious and affectionate understanding, and thus nourished feeling 
and life in all the members of the mystical body of Jesus Christ, 
that is, in all true believers that has existed or that will exist 
from the creation till the consummation of the world. 

The Reformation furiously assailed indulgences, and, taking 
the abuse for the thing itself, could find no other origin for them 
than a sordid avidity for lucre ; and you have discovered their 
true source in St. Paul himself, you have followed them in their 
course from age to age, and discovered the traces of them in the 
rigors of the canonical penances. The Reformation freed the 
people at once from all expiatory works, by persuading them 
that the infinite satisfactions of Jesus Christ dispensed them from 
making any personal satisfaction : and you have seen the holy 
bishops of the first ages subjecting sinners to long austerities, 
expressly obliging them to satisfy the divine justice for the of- 
fences they had committed. The reformation authorized the 
people to shake off the yoke of confession, some pretending that 
it was not necessary for obtaining from God the remission of our 
sins ; others, that it was a pure invention of the Popes to torture 
men's consciences; and you have seen the greatest doctors of the 
Church insist upon the necessity of our making a most exact 
confession of our sins to the priests, in order to obtain the par- 
flon of them from God, and you have learned that, in the an- 
cienl discipline, confession made in public always supposed a pre- 
vious confession made to the priests in private. 

The Reformation split upon the great article of the Eucharist, 
Luther retaining tin: real presence, Zuinglius and Calvin reject- 
ing it together with the change of substance, the altar, the 
Sacrifice and the adoration: and you have seen the primitive 



550 ON THE CHUBCH OF ENGLAND 

Church, in opposition to both, instructing the neophytes to be- 
lieve all the mysteries, notwithstanding their height or opposition 
to human sense; you have seen all the liturgies of the world 
draw them out in most striking characters, and this agreement 
of opposite communions in the fifth century, demonstrate the 
common and apostolical source of this belief; you have moreover 
recognized it in the secret which the faithful so inviolably kept, 
a secret completely unintelligible and inexplicable on the ideas 
of the reformation, and which could only be employed to conceal 

our mysteries. 

The reformation, proceeding at first with wary and timorous 
step, seemed only to be waiting for the decision of the Church to 
submit to it; but afterwards, assuming an attitude of stern defi- 
ance it would submit to no superior tribunal ; it aimed the blow 
against all authority ; and you have seen antiquity have recourse 
to this authority, and invoke its assistance against rising errors ; 
you have seen the Church, at first in its state of dispersion, un- 
avoidable from circumstances, and then in the general councils 
exercise that supreme authority, and fulminate its decrees against 
heresies The Reformation, unsettled in its principles, appeared 
sometimes to admit unwritten traditions, but more frequently de- 
clared that it knew no other rule of faith but the Scripture : and 
you have seen all antiquity form its belief upon the double de- 
posit of Revelation,-Scripture and Tradition The Reforma- 
tion boasted of holding in its hand the key of the Scriptures of 
being able to communicate it to every individual and of grant- 
ing to each one the right, which it arrogated to itself, to under- 
stand and explain the holy books, according to his own private 
judgment: and you have seen all antiquity oppose to his prin- 
cipt of disunion and discord the voice of the universal Church, 
and regard those as excommunicated who, persisting m their own 
private explanations, obstinately refused to submit their opinions 
to the general doctrine of the bishops. ,-•'.. A 

The Reformation feared not to break the bonds of unity, and 
to advance diverse pretexts to justify its separation, even so far 
as to pretend that it found this separation absolutely indispensa- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 557 

ble : and you have heard the greatest doctors of the primitive 
Church uniformly teach that there never could exist any legiti- 
mate reason for breaking unity ; that schism is a crime most op- 
posed to the spirit and the end of Revelation, and of all sins the 
most fatal and unpardonable. In fine, the Reformation shew3 
us amongst its propagators, here religious men and priests with- 
out mission, there civil magistrates, assemblies of laics without 
a shadow of competency in spirituals, trenching upon discipline 
and doctrine, each fashioning the Church to his taste, all in open 
revolt against those, to whom it was said: " He that despiseth 
you, despiseth me ;" and you have seen Christian antiquity, 
faithful to the institution of Jesus Christ, exclusively recognize 
the spiritual authority of the apostles and their successors ; you 
have seen the first Christian emperors await their decisions, set 
the example of submission, and require the same submission 
from their subjects. 

It is therefore true, Sir, that in pretending to bring you back 
to the primitive faith, the Reformation has precisely led you as- 
tray from it ; it is therefore true that in all its objections against 
us, there is not one in which you do not discover it at variance 
with antiquity. The fact is certain, and it was perceived by a 
great number of your able divines, so much so, that their indi- 
vidual testimonies would suffice to establish each of the articles 
which we have examined. Here call Middleton to your recollec- 
tion, who so distinctly read in the first ages all the articles, 
which your Reformation retrenched, that he found no other 
means of supporting it, than that of effacing at a single stroke 
all the documents of the Fathers, and of paying no regard what- 
ever to their traditions and testimonies- 1 

But you will say to me, how is this? The leaders of Refor- 
mation and our reforming bishops pass generally amongst us as 
having been men of superior minds, and eminent in ecclesiasti- 
cal knowledge: and you have just represented them to me as 

i Mid'Hiton u;i- correct when li<' Judged that the Reformation ami the primitive 
Church were incompatible, and that it wai impossible to be attached, to both, 
His folly and peculiar taste led him t" give the preference to the Ucforination, 



558 ON THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 

persons buried in ignorance ! According to you, they could have 
had no knowledge of the doctrine which they wished to introduce 
into the world. In truth, Sir, this cannot be conceived. 

I see you are much struck, Sir ; it is what I was expecting. 
You will perhaps be still more astonished, when I tell you that 
I am not at all surprised at it. I can explain very naturally the 
mistakes and errors of fact in which they have fallen. It must 
not be thought that in their time men possessed, respecting an- 
tiquity, those exact notions which we have since acquired. The 
invention of printing is dated about sixty years before the Kc- 
formation. The greater part of the monuments of the Church 
and the works of the Fathers had not then been brought to 
light. The libraries were not what they have since become ; 
they contained little more than manuscripts often incorrect, al- 
ways extremely difficult to decipher. The oriental liturgies, 
those precious and instructive monuments were totally unknown, 
and continued to be so till a century later. Thus be your re- 
formers as well-informed as you please for the age in which they 
lived, their unavoidably limited knowledge necessarily prevented 
them from making a correct and extensive acquaintance with 
Christian antiquity : this was not so much their fault as that of 
the age in which they lived. 1 

But by degrees the works of the Fathers and the records of 

•We know moreover that to acquire amongst the people more credit than their 
adversaries, the Reformers generally applied themselves to the study of the Greek 
and Hebrew languages, which were then much neglected, and published from 
the originals numerous translations of the Old and New Testaments. Calvin, for 
example, had scarcely completed the study of tlie belles lettres, law. and the lan- 
guages, when at the age of thirty he published his Institutions, and thus began 
to dogmatize before he had made any serious study of theology. Luther, at first 
educated for the bar, afterwards terrified by the thunderbolt which struck his 
friend dead at his side, renounces the world and its concerns, takes refuge in a 
cloister, (what a commencement for such an end, Providence!) seriously ap- 
plies himself to theology, gives lessons of the same, and preaches h ith celebrity. 
He employed much of his time in reading St. Augustin, and undoubtedly was no 
stranger to some of the other Fathers. But the difficulty of the circumstances, 
and the rarity of printed works permitted him to possess hut a very imperfect 
knowledge of antiquity, when at the age of thirty-two he began to broach his 
opinions, and talk of reforming the world. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 559 

ecclesiastical history, which till then had been preserved in manu- 
script, were put to press and brought to light. Men of inde- 
fatigable industry, guided by the rules of sound and judicious 
criticism, produced afterwards other editions more correct: these 
editions multiplied, and were in the hands and under the eyes of 
the teachers of every existing party. Each sought in them for 
the dogmas of their respective communions ; emulation animated 
their investigation, and produced from every side treatises re- 
plete with ecclesiastical knowledge, and nobly adorned with an- 
tiquity. In France, among the Catholics appeared two eminent 
theologians, living almost during the time of the Reformation, 
the Cardinal du Perron, and PereMorin: Pere Petau, still more 
learned, followed immediately after them ; his age, which was 
the golden age of France, enriched the Gallican Church which a 
Vansleb, a Renaudot, a Le Brun, who brought to light the ori- 
ental liturgies ; two celebrated friends, Arnauld and Nicole, who 
admirably digested whatever had been believed and taught from 
the origin of Christianity, on the great controverted points; and 
that incomparable genius, whom heaven endowed with a talent 
of fixing public opinion upon the numerous subjects which he 
treated, and also of attaining to the summit of Christain elo- 
quence. On the side of the Calvinists, Aubertin, Daiile, and 
and Claude have also produced mudi extensive information re- 
specting the Fathers. .Spain has had her learned controversial- 
ists; Italy its Bellarmine; Germany its Wallemburg, &c. for 
Catholics, and its Kemnitius, its Callixtus, &c. for protestants ; 
>nd your country, Sir, (for assuredly I will not be the person to 
refuse to England the glory of having produced most distinguished 
men in every branch of literature and the sciences), may boast 
of having had, among others, Doctors Forbes, Montague, Pear- 
son, Bull, Thorndikc, Ileylin, Collyer, Samuel Parker, Bev- 
eridge, Cave, Grabe, &o. for whom Christian antiquity, if I may 
be allowed the expression, had no secrets. All these men of 
talent and profound knowledge cmulously labored in investigat- 
ing the voluminous writings of the lirst ages; the Catholiost, to 
vindicate before t!i<- world the apnstulu-ity of the dogmas, of 



560 on the church of England 

which they themselves were previously well convinced from the 
uniform, and perpetual doctrine of the Church; the Protestants, 
on the contrary, to oppose testimonies to testimonies, to weaken 
the strength of our citations, to take away, as much as possible, 
from our dogmas their apostolical date, and substitute a more re- 
cent one in their place, and by this means to maintain the honor 
of the party in which they found themselves engaged ; although 
nevertheless many of our adversaries, especially among your 
countrymen, for their honor I say it, have made no difficulty in 
acknowledging, sometimes upon one question, sometimes upon 
another, and, uniting them together, nearly upon all, that the 
primitive Church had taught what we teach. Whatever may be 
thought of so much indefatigable research and so many contra- 
dictory discussions, the facts have acquired all the certainty of 
which they are capable ; upon each of the articles, which divide 
us, every thing has been brought forward from known and ex- 
isting records; every thing for and against has been collected 
from the writings of the Fathers. There are no new discoveries 
to be made, no new research to be pursued. Every thing has 
been brought to light ; so that, at the present day, nothing more 
is wanting for our instruction and conviction, than a little appli- 
cation, and great sincerity. 

These true and purely historical observations ought to con- 
vince you now, Sir, that the primitive Church could have been 
but very imperfectly known at the epoch, when the Reformation 
undertook to lead us back to her : they should give you to un- 
derstand that whilst the Reformation boasted of dissipating ig- 
norance, it was itself involved in darkness. It is not to be won- 
dered that, boldly rushing forward in the dark, it should leave 
the path, and having left the path, should go so egregiously 
astray. It decided, without hesitation, questions with which it 
imagined itself acquainted, and peremptorily pronounced its 
opinions with the confident assurance of those, who believe them- 
selves sure of their fact, precisely because they know nothing 
about it. Its proceeding was therefore necessarily defective, 
and its work was incorrectly sketched. It is true that by di.spu- 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 561 

tation it sharpened the mind, provoked labor, induced ecclesias- 
tical knowledge, and accelerated the progress of light ; this I 
grant ; but you must also grant that this very light is the death- 
blow of the Reformation. The splendor, which it casts around, 
has clearly exposed the falsity of its allegations, and has demon 
strated that the Reformation never began a controversy of any 
importance against us, in which the error was not upon its side 
But what appears to me something strange is, that men, so 
well informed as many are, and as all may be in these days, 
should remain attached to the opinions of those who neither were, 
nor could be so informed ; that men of penetration should permit 
themselves to be guided by the blind, whose very efforts to leave 
their darkness prove at every step how deeply they were involved 
in it ; what again appears strange is, that an age, to which all 
the sources of knowledge are thrown open, should continue to 
be led by an age during which nearly all these sources were 
closed. Who would now-a-days choose to defend the thirty-nine 
articles, drawn up by men who, without any right to meddle in 
such matters, heaped, as they did, one error upon another? 1 
They rose in open schism against their legitimate bishops and 
the universal Church, and seemed not to be aware that of all 
crimes schism is the most enormous and the most opposed to the 
views of Christ and the end of his revelation. They denied the 
authority of the Church, because they had revolted against her, 
and knew not that they could never prevail against her, because 

•Dr. Balguy declares that "Some of them are expressed in doubtful terms; 
others are inaccurate, perhaps unphilosophioal : others again may chance to mislead 
an ignorant reader into some erroneous opinion." English discourses (as quoted 
by Dr. Milner, Letters to a Prebendary, Letter VIII. p. Ill, fith edition.) 

** The articles of our established Church, observes Mason Good, are variously 
interpreted by many, even of those who sit upon the episcopal bench ; and ac- 
cording to our modern controversies, we scarcely know whether they were built 
■upon an Arminian or Calvinifltio foundation." 

"One may conceive, says Sterne, that all these articles may be believed, by 
supposing that one person believes one of them, and another another, and so on; 
but I do not imagine that there has ever been any one so weak at to behove them 
all." 

"The forms of orthodoxy, the article - of faith, are sub icribed with a sigh or a 
Bmile by the modern Clergy." Qibbon'e Decline and Fall, C. LIV. al the end. 



562 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

she is established upon the word and promises of her divine 
founder. They taught that every thing essential was contained 
in the Scripture, and did not see that they directly contradicted the 
Scripture, which commands them to believe also the unwritten 
word. They treated whatever wc practice and teach respecting 
indulgences, purgatory, the invocation of saints, respect paid to 
relics and images, as fond things vainly invented, and repugnant 
to the word of G-od ; and did not see these various articles in the 
doctrine of the apostles, and were not aware that by following 
this doctrine we conform to the primitive Church, and to the 
unwritten word, which is equally the word of God. They passed 
over Confession in silence, and had no suspicion of its necessity; 
of which however you have seen evident proofs. They quibbled 
upon the real presence, and openly rejected Transubstantiation, 
like persons who understood not the Scriptures, and were igno- 
rant of the Liturgies, the Apostolic institutions, and the real doc- 
trine of antiquity.' 

If they could only have been better acquainted with what the 

1 What again would be the result, if I had exposed the errors which they taught 
respecting the number of the sacred books and of the Sacraments, communion 
under both kinds, reserving the consecrated host, canonical mission, which they 
acknowledge to be necessary, but which they themselves had not received ; the 
effects of excommunication which they admit, but which they did not regard in 
their own case : the unlimited power in all ecclesiastical causes yielded to the 
temporal Sovereign, and at the same time every kind of jurisdiction withdrawn 
from the successor of Peter, &c. And again, on the right claimed by each Church 
to reform itself: even so far as to form a schism from the universal Church ! But 
supposing each Church to possess the right of reforming itself, it has consequently 
the right also of rejecting a reformation which it disapproves of; and this is what 
the English Church did in 1558, by its bishops and by the two chambers of the 
convocation, whom the intruders of 1562 could never have had the right to con- 
tradict and oppose. 

"If in these ages of more experience and learning they (the Anglicans and the 
Reformed) would submit to call the decrees of the more ignorant times to an 
examination, 1 dare engage that considering what vast improvements have been 
made in all the several branches of learning, and particularly in theology, they 
will think otherwise of these matters than their ignorant predecessors did before 
them, especially if they lay aside those prejudices that are rather contracted by 
custom than judgment." DodweWs Discourse concerning the late English Schism — 
London, 1704, p. 257. — I flatter myself that Dodwell would not, at the present 
day, be displeased at the application which 1 make of his words. 



AND TII3 REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 563 

Fathers have left us ; could they have had hefove their eyes the 
monuments which we now possess in print, and the collections 
and the learned dissertations to which their mistakes gave rise ; 
they would have adopted other principles, and have established 
quite a different doctrine : this cannot be doubted, unless we re- 
fuse to believe their assertions, and suppose them to have been 
guided by interested motives and not by sincerity. 

For evidently at the time in which we live, we must shut our 
eyes to the light, or turn them away from their thirty nine ar- 
ticles. We must renounce our knowledge, of their labor; we 
must give up all that we have learned and read, or what they 
have done or said. Let us sigh over the faults and the errors, 
into which they fell, in consequence of the unfortunate ignorance 
of their age ; but let us no longer share in them and prolong 
them. It is assuredly time to be emancipated from them; it is 
time to take all necessary measures to put an end to a separation 
introduced under auspices so unfavorable and deceitful. 1 

The attempts so often made by Protestants to become united 
among themselves have, up to this time, proved nothing more 
than the conviction they felt of the necessity of union, and of 
the irresistible motives which establish the obligation of it. They 
have always failed in their attempt, and have nevor been likely 

1 It belongs not to me to point out these measures. But instruction being once 
disseminated, and the minds of men prepared, I should conceive that the re-union 
would not be so difficult an affair to accomplish. II' they would adhere strictly 
to the dogmas defined according to the judicious rules of Veron, it would suffice: 
nothing more need be required. In return, our principles permit us to make the 
greatest concessions in points of discipline, such as communion under both kinds, 
the marriage of ecclesiastics, divine service in tin- vulgar tongue, all the ceremo- 
i -hi-, the ornaments of the priests, of the altars, and of the churches; 
in a word, every point of discipline, which the Church should judge expedient to 
change. And as faith dwells in the intellectual pari of man. the change would 
,-,-t Imperceptible. The public worship would remain to the eye nearly 
what it is at present. This applies -^till better t" the Greek Church. 
• • We ought to Bhew great charity to heretics, and from condescension to their 
ce, yield to them whatever does not affect either mo- 
rality or faith. Discipline being subjeol to variation, there cannot exist a 
nee ing it in certain points, than when the object is to recall to the 

f „ n i, v m: , innumerable multitude now separated iron, it." Sec QBuvres 
melli, Tom. IV. p. 91. 



504 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

to attain it, because they have never taken the only way which 
could conduct them to it, and which however had been traced 
out to them by eminent individuals of their communions. They 
must permit me here to call their attention to the opinion of two 
personages, whose candor, strength of mind, and superiority of 
judgment and learning, they will not call in question. " Gro- 
tius is absolutely of this judgment, and many others concur with 
him in the same sentiment, that Protestants cannot be united 
among themselves, except they are united together with those 
who are in communion with the see of Rome. Hence it is his 
wish that the separation which has been made, and the causes 
of separation, were taken away. Amongst these causes, the 
primacy of the bishop of Rome, according to the canons, is not to 
be reckoned ; as Melancthon likewise confesses ; who is of opinion 
that that primacy is even necessary for the preserving of unity." 1 

"When once it is agreed in the Church of England, that sal- 
vation may be and always might have been attained in the 
Church of Rome, it is beyond a doubt to me that no Church 
could separate from the Roman Church without constituting 
itself, necessarily, by that fact alone, schismatical before God." 2 

" It is from attachment to the Reformation that I insist upon 
a principle, which may serve to re-unite us to the Church of 
Rome, being fully convinced that without this we shall never be 
well united among ourselves, and that not our reformation only, 
but even the Christianity which we profess in common, will be 
destroyed by our divisions, which never will end but by a re-union 
with fiomc."* 

Never did any period promise, so favorable as the present, the 
hope of a universal return to unity. The length of time, which 
has elapsed since the destruction of unity, has cooled the heads 
of men formerly heated by violent animosities. Let us only en- 
deavor, now that we are become calm, not to become indifferent. 
Let us surrender ourselves to the truth, which is manifested to 
our eyes. To reject it is a crime without excuse and without 

1 Grotius, close of last Reply to Rivet. Apol. Discuss. 2 Thorndike, on For- 
bearance, p. 19. 3 Idem. lb. p. 38 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 505 

remedy; to embrace it, a duty and a happiness. Need I repeat 
it to a people who love truth, to a people perhaps better formed 
for feeling it than any other, and who would already have recog- 
nized it, if prejudices, which always darken the mind, had not 
hitherto prevented them from discovering it. These prejudices 
conceived against us and our belief, appear now to be partially 
dissipated. The English 1 have beheld landing upon their shores 
an immense multitude of Catholic priests, whom Providence in 
its merciful views for the salvation both of the proscribed and 
the protectors, had cast upon their hospitable island. The marks 
of compassion and generosity, which they have shewn to our 
unfortunate clergy, lead me to conclude that they have not found 
them such as they had previously supposed them to be. By com- 
municating with them, in order to alleviate their misery, they 
have discovered virtues, which gained their esteem. Of them 
and their religious principles they have formed a less unfavorable 
opinion ; instruction would easily accomplish the rest. Perhaps 
also Providence, in its adorable designs, has permitted in our 
days the temporal degradation of the head of our Church, and 
has given him in his forlorn condition such heroic constancy, for 
no other purpose than to inspire into those, who had become 
strangers to him, a high esteem of his dignity, and to cause 
them to forget the apprehensions they had formerly conceived in 
his regard ; perhaps again, it may be the design of Heaven one 
day to accept their support for replacing the successor of Peter 
in his See, in order to lead them more sweetly to a total recon- 
ciliation with him, by the kind feeling which is created in us to- 
wards those whom we have had the advantage of serving and 
obliging. 

If I look at the two Houses of Parliament, I discover in the 
first the most illustrious personages in the state, and, in both, 
men of distinguished merit and learning, whose votes are pub- 
licly applied to every thing that is good and just, and conse- 
quently truly useful; and whose learned debates are quickly 

1 This applies almost as much to the inhabitants of Holland, the various states 
of Qcrmany, Switzerland, Baxony, Brandebonrg, &c 
48 



5CG ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

spread through the nation, conveying instruction and light to the 
extremities of the empire. I will suppose that one of the mem- 
bers should think proper to introduce the following question . 
" Did Jesus Christ confide the administration of his Church, and 
the deposit of his doctrine to Parliament '? Did he invest Par- 
liament with a right to pronounce upon faith, heresies, ordina- 
tion, mission and the deposition of bishops? Did he give this 
spiritual jurisdiction, with the power of delegating the same to 
the supreme ruler of the state ? I am convinced that he would 
excite a universal laugh in the House, and would receive no 
other reply. The limits of each authority are now-a-days too 
well defined to be confounded ; and the Parliament which is all 
powerful in the temporal and social order of things, is well 
aware that it has never received from Christ any spiritual power 
whatever. It knows that it is not to itself that our Saviour said: 
" Go, teach all nations ; I am with you to the consummation 
of the world. He that hears you, hears me : he that despises 
you despises me : as my Father has sent me, I also send you ; 
feed my lambs, feed my sheep: there shall be but one fold and 
one shepherd, &c. m And yet the Parliament of 1558 was ig- 
norant of these simple truths, or at least acted as if it was. It 
seized upon the jurisdiction given by Jesus Christ to his apostles 
and their successors and placed it on the crown. Elizabeth 
seemed to believe herself sufficiently invested with it ; for she 
put into full action the power that they had given her, which was 
precisely the same as her brother and father had exercised before 
her. 2 This usurpation of spiritual authority, and the transfer 

1 The dominant faction which, in 1790, was bent upon giving to France what 
it called a civil constitution, was composed, as is well known, of avowed infidels 
of abandoned wretches, of seducing fanatics, and a seduced and weak-minded 
multitude. It had assumed the most absolute authority, but it never dared to 
usurp the spiritual jurisdiction : it protested that it never had pretended to exer- 
cise such jurisdiction, and even declared, as a principle, that it had no claim what, 
ever to it. It knew well that it would have been impossible to instil the contrary 
principle into an enlightened nation, which had read so attentively the works of 
Marca and Bossuet. 

* See the Admonition, which Elizabeth added to her injunctions, the first year 
of her reign, and the Act of Parliament, "for the assurance of the Queen's royal 
power over all estates and subjects within her dominions." Act 5. Eliz. c. I. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 5G7 

made of it to the crown, are both alike repugnant to the order 
and disposition of Jesus Christ. Consequently whatever was 
done under Elizabeth was done without right, or the least 
shadow of competency: every thing is radically null in the prin- 
ciple, and will continue to be null so long as it shall exist. 
These truths are as clear to the mind as the noon-day light is to 
our eyes. I would say therefore to the actual parliament, if I 
had the honor of belonging to that most ancient and enlightened 
and upright body, to that body which no Englishman reveres 
and honors more than I do myself; I would say to it that it is 
its indispensable duty to abolish the infamous encroachment of 
1558 ; for on the principle of morality and ecpiity, to maintain 
and perpetuate an establishment acknowledged to be anti-chris- 
tian, when it can be suppressed, is not less deserving of condem- 
nation, than the having first set it on foot. 

If I looked at the Established Church, 1 I find that she carries 
in her bosom the principle of her destruction, in that liberty of 
making a religious and form of worship for themselves, which 
she cannot now deny to any, after claiming it for herself; per- 
haps she would already have sunk, if Parliament, which created 
her, had not transferred to her that protection, which hitherto 
had been given to the religion that was now suppressed ; I mean 
to say, if, when Parliament banished the ancient Church from 
the constitution, it had not called the new religion to occupy its 
place. But be this protection as powerful as it may, it cannot 
destroy that radical evil, which invisibly saps its foundation. 

1 1 have had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with many members of 
both orders of its clergy, and I must say that I have found the greater part to be 
men commendable for the propriety of their conduct, the gravity of their deport- 
ment, the order and economy of their families, for their cultivated minds, their 
taste for study and information, but too generally in natural sciences, mathematics, 
chemistry, botany, mineralogy, <tc. 

It i- well that the Clergy possesses men who excel separately in the human 
. but the great, nay far the greater Dumber, oughl to apply themselves to 
the Holy Scripture, to the monuments of ecclesiastical history, to theology, in 
(in.-, which i- almost abandoned in England, I have remarked with Borrow that 
in the excellent libraries al Cambridge and Oxford, ii"' superb editions of the 
Futhers and the <"uin-il- ajce thickly covered with disgraceful dust. 



568 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

From its origin the Reformation has beheld its children deserting 
it by little and little, passing over sometimes to one society, some- 
times to another, while thus rival sects increase in numbers by its 
losses. How many has it not to regret from the numerous conquests 
that are unceasingly made by the Methodist alone ? These had 
already, in my time, acquired considerable accessions : in London I 
observed crowds of people nocking to their chapels, and obstruct- 
ing the streets on their return. The like concourse accompanied 
them in the country towns ; I also beheld them propagate them- 
selves in country places, and detach from the parishes a great 
proportion of the inhabitants. If what I have heard since my 
departure from England be true, we may already nearly calcu- 
late the precise, and not far distant period, when the established 
bishops and clergy will find themselves in solitude, in the midst 
of their spacious Churches. What stop can they put to the pro- 
gress of that invading sect ? Will not the Methodists perpetually 
say that they make just use of the liberty, which the Reforma- 
tion grants to its followers, and without which the Reformation 
itself would no where have gained a footing — the liberty of 
working out one's salvation and serving God according to one's 
own idea? But the remedy will, I trust, be found even in the 
very excess of evil. The established Church must begin to be 
convinced, and will daily become more convinced, by the most 
sensible of all proofs — experience — that the whole Reformation 
turns upon a principle of divisions, intestine discords, and death; 
that it is impossible to hold men together in unity and order, 
when once the career is thrown open to their natural and unre- 
strained impetuosity. It will at last feel that it can escape ruin 
and dissolution only by retracing its steps, by returning to the 
point from which it started, by acknowledging and itself sharing 
that supreme and salutary authority, which alone is able to unite 
men in one body, and which with this view was actually given 
by Jesus Christ to his Church, that she might maintain har- 
mony and unity from one extremity of the world to the other. 

In fine, if I consider the British Empire, I discover a people, 
the difforent classes of which are better informed than those of 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 569 

other countries; the individuals of which, being generally in 
the habit of discussion and business, and obliged to calculate 
and reflect, must necessarily be less obstinate in their prejudices, 
more susceptible of truth, and more open to conviction. Let a 
nation of this solid character reflect impartially on the effects of 
the Reformation in its own and in foreign countries, and it will 
discover that in religion its retrenchments, far from being ad- 
vantageous, as men had persuaded themselves, are but imaginary 
goods, and real evils, and not unfrequently, essential alterations 
in revealed doctrine, as I have proved ; and that in politics it 
has inundated the world with a deluge of calamities. 1 Most as- 
suredly I take no delight in exaggerating its real faults, or in- 
venting imaginary ones ; but is it not true, that if it had never 
appeared, Ireland would not have been the most miserable of all 
nations under heaven, and would not have tasted, during more 
than two hundred years, all the horrors of war and civil oppres- 
sions, which originate in the rage for compelling the multitude 
to receive and adopt, contrary to their principles and conscience, 
a new religion, which itself came into the world proclaiming to all 
people the liberty of serving God according to their own ideas ? 
Is it not true, that Scotland would not have been thrown into 
anarchy and all in flames by the preaching of a Knox, and a 
Willock, by their infamous declamations and writings, and by 
those of Buchanan, by their deeply plotted revolts, and the 
euormous calumnies of Murray, Morton, Lethington, &c. ; that 
the beautiful and unfortunate Mary Stuart would not have been 
compelled to fly before her rebellious subjects, to implore an asy- 
lum with her royal relative, who received her as a rival, and after 
eighteen years of captivity, to lay down her innocent and royal 
head, under the hatchet of the executioner ?* Is it not true, 

1 "Calvini discipuli, obicnmqne invaluerunt, imperia fcurbavere." Grotius, In 
i. Kivrt. Tom. IV. p. 848. 

•• C:iivini-Mi BBO oaea rilj prodnoed civil war.-, and -l k the foundation of states. 

'I'll me i- do country, in which the religions if Lather and <':>K in have appeared, 
without making blood to Bow." Voltaire, 8iecle de touts XIV. c. X.Wlll. 

•Sea Whitaker, Tj tier, Stoarl : and doI Hum.-. Boberaton, &c, «li>> have been 
convicted of groat errore p peotiqg the unfortunate Mary, s^e also Lea Me- 

48* 



5(0 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

that in England, Mary would not have enkiudled the pile, Eliza- 
beth would not have prepared her tortures and gibbets and con- 
verted the Catholic worsbip into a capital crime ; Charles the 
First would not have beheld himself, after a rebellion of six 
years continuance imprisoned, judged, and dragged by his sub- 
jects to the scaffold ; James the Second would not have been con- 
strained, in order to avoid the fate of his father, to abandon his 
kingdom and his crown ; both of them being sovereigns in a 
country, where the ministers alone are responsible, and where 
the person of kings is inviolable, and his majesty can do no 
wrong? Is it not true, that Germany would never have beheld 
its numerous states, rising one against the other with destructive 
rage, during an implacable war of thirty years continuance ? 
That the Low Countries and Holland would not have been tho 
theatres of battles and executions? Is it not true, that France 
would not have witnessed either its perpetual conspiracies and 
intestine and cruel wars, or the shame of that terrible night of 
St. Bartholomew, or the frenzy of the league, or, after the effu- 
sion of so much blood, that dark and dismal fermentation of oppo- 
site parties, which was long repressed, though never extinguished, 
and at last burst forth in a revolution far surpassing, in wicked- 
moires de Castelnau, edition of Abbe Le Laboureur. L' Histoire de la rivalite de 
la France et de l'Anglettere, par M. Gaillard. 

Let us hear a well informed English writer, who lived and wrote soon after 
those terrible times : " In the mean time the common infamy prevailed, and none 
is made more guilty of it than this wretched Queen, who had been drawn to give 
consent to her marriage with Bothwel, by the solicitation and avarice of those 
very men, who afterwards condemned her for it. In order to whose ends. Buch- 
anan publishes a. most pestilent and malicious libel, which he called The Defection, 
wherein he publicly traduced her for living au adulterous life with David Risio, 
and afterwards with Bothwel himself; that to precipitate her unlawful marriage, 
she had contrived the death of the king her husband, projected a divorce between 
Bothwel and his former wife, contrary to the laws both of God and man. Which 
libel being printed and dispersed abroad obtained so much credit with most sorts 
of people, that few made question of the truth of the accusations. Most true it 
is, that Buchanan is reported by king James himself to have confessed with great 
grief at the time of his death, how falsely and injuriously he had dealt with her in 
that scandalous pamphlet; but this confession came too late, and was known to 
few, and therefore proved too weak a remedy for the former mischief." Heylin's 
//<\/. of Presbyterians, Book V. p. 191— Oxford, 1(370. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 571 

ness and barbarity, any thing we have ever read of in the annals 
of the world? For, however far removed the Reformation may 
be from that last bloody epoch, of which we have just been wit- 
nesses, he who watches and traces the progress of opinions, will 
discover between them a more direct and immediate connexion 
than might at first be imagined. In fact, reflect that, after hav- 
ing brought to light the Anabaptists in Germany, the Puritans 
and Independents in your country, the Soeinians in Switzerland, 
Hungary and Poland, it required but a trifling effort to give 
birth to deists and infidels, and to multiply them, for the curse of 
France and the world. Take up Heylin's History of the Pres- 
byterians, and you will see there ' that they were the inventors 
and first apologists of the principles, which our revolutionists 
first laid down as fundamental laws, and from which they after- 
wards proceeded to legalize robbery, proscriptions, assassinations, 
anarchy, to swell the number of their accomplices, and to distri- 

1 Among others, at p. 27, he cites this maxim of the English Puritans, disciples 
of Calvin, that " if the princes hinder them that travail in the search of this 
holy discipline, (this holy liberty) they are tyrants to the Church and the min- 
isters of it (to the nation;) and being so, may be deposed by their subjects.'' 
Idem, at p. 68, on the assassination of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot. At p. 141, 
on the assassination of Cardinal Beton, he says that Knox, in the lirst edition of 
his history, calls the stabs, which James Melvin gave him with a dagger, and 
the words with which he accompanied them, a godly action and saying. At p. 
IV!. he relates that, in the opinions of Willock, Kings, although the lieutenants 
of God upon earth, are still liable to be deposed for just causes. At p. 285, he 
mentions some of their seditious maxims: for example, if princes do hinder them 
that teekfor thi* discipline {liberty, )they are tyrants <"<</ may be deposed by th< ;,- 
svbjecta. At p. 447, he tells us that, during the Rebellion, " It was also preached 
and printed by the Presbyterians to the same effect (as Buchanan, and Knox, 
Calvin and Borne other of the sect bad before delivered) That ofi power was origi- 
■ ii the /"o/de of a state or nation j in kings no otherwise than by delegation/ 
or by way of tru i ; which trust might he recalled when the people pleased ;.... that 
kings being only the sworn officer* of the commonwealth, they might L- called to an 
account, and pi of mal-administration, even to imprisonment) deposi- 

tion^ and to death itself , if lawfully convicted qj i'." Our Revolutionists, there- 
fine, were only pupil.-, copyists, and echoes of tin' Reformation and the reformed. 

"Good God! what, a tragedy are we preparing for posterity 1" exclaimed 
Melanchton, struck with terror ;it t hi ■ unbridled licentiousness, which the Refor- 
mation introduced among I its admirers. that the last act of this long and 
bloody tragedy may at length be closed. 1 



572 ON THE CIIU11CH OF ENGLAND 

bute the nation into victims and executioners. In fine if you 
imagine that I have unjustly charged the Reformation with that 
long and bloody series of crimes and calamities, cast your eyes 
upon those people which have had the happiness to prevent its 
entrance among them. When once we find that interior peace 
is maintained, where admittance has not been given to it, and 
when, on the contrary, flames of civil discord have raged where 
ever it has entered, it must stand clearly convicted of the charges 
imputed to it : and because it has evidently been every where 
the first aggressor, it is natural to ascribe to it, in great measure, 
not only to the horrors perpetrated by its x>wn adherents, but 
those also which it occasioned its adversaries to commit. For 
no one can deny that it is the accomplice of the crimes which it 
has provoked, and which, without such provocation, would never 
have taken place. 1 

1 The Reformation was repelled from Portugal and Spain by the tribunals of 
the inquisition, which had been previously erected against the followers of Ma- 
homet. 1 do not undertake to justify these tribunals in theory and on principle; 
I merely look at the effects produced by them in the Peninsula. They are accused 
(and would to God there was less reason for the charge!) of having carried 
rigor to injustice and cruelty. Why did they not imitate those of Italy ? With- 
out defiling themselves with innocent blood, they would have obtained all that 
success, which the sovereigns expected from their vigilance. But would it be 
reasonable to confound the abuse with the thing itself, and to impute to the in- 
quisition, crimes of which its officers only were guilty ? It is generally agreed 
now-a-days that the number of innocent victims has been greatly exaggerated. 
Had not this been the case, Spain, while she reproached herself with all these 
cruel and unjust executions, would not have to regret the lot of other states, 
where religious wars, have shed a deluge of human blood, destroyed thousands 
of men, covered the land with mourning, tears, misery, desolation, sacrilege and 
every crime that the devils could iuspire into unnatural fellow-citizens, and breth- 
ren infuriated against each other. 

Who does not see that without its religious unity, Spain (and the same must 
be said of Portugal) would have sunk in our days, itself concurring to effect its 
ruin with the hostile armies, which, after having so long preyed upon its bosom, 
have been rejected by the heroic and united efforts of the whole nation and its 
magnanimous allies! — "Although this detestable institution (the inquisition) 
should hold a part of the people in ignorance, an extenuation will be found for 
its tyranny in its having been serviceable in preserving them from the contagion 
of the moral principles, which have inundated and defiled other parts of Europe." 
La Owe d' Espagm, tran. by Compte de Sesmaisons, 1823, from the original 
work in English. 



AND THE REFORMATION IX GENERAL. 573 

It appears to me that these observations upon the political ef- 
fects of the Kelbrination in Europe must necessarily inspire every 
impartial man with aversion to it ; that they must weaken in its 
followers that attachment and interest, which the prejudices of 
education alone have inspired ; that they must eventually pro- 
duce in them a feeling of estrangement in its regard, and make 
them desirous that it should be entirely abandoned. What then 
must we think and feel, if, to these considerations purely terres- 
trial, are added religious motives — schism, and its total incom- 
patibility with salvation according to the acknowledgment of all 
parties — the Eucharist reduced to a mere pious ceremony, and 
Jesus Christ banished from his sacrament — a whole life without 
one valid absolution — and confession, essential for the pardon of 
sins, totally put aside ? I have produced and developed decisivo 
proofs on these points : there is no longer room for deliberation. 
I say then to the Established Church, and to the numerous sects 
which divide with her the British Empire ; I say also to the body 
of Lutheranism, as well as to the Calvanistio societies ; to all 
those, in fine, of every communion, who may peruse these pages, 
whatever be their country, or profession of faith : ' ' You must 
either renounce schism or salvation." 

Were this language merely my own, it would doubtless excite 
no alarm. But it is the language of my Saviour, that of his 
Apostles and all their Successors, who, according to the order of 
their Divine Master, have always regarded rebels to the Church 
as heathens and publicans. I know the Nation I am addressing : 
it will forgive me the application I make to it of the Oracle of 
Christ : The weak spurn at truth and reject it ; by the English- 
man it is honored and embraced. If he does not discover it in 
•what is presented to him, he does not on that account entertain 
the less esteem for him, who thinks he has made it manifest, and 
who does it with the sole design of serving him. Perhaps I 
shall not be heard in vain: perhaps the day will come (may Hea- 
ven accelerate it!) when men will cca.«e to he indifferent to a 
reunion so long desired by all good men. That happy day will 
be, when men shall feel that political unity, the impregnable 



574 ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 

rampart of states, is never so solidly cemented as by religious 
unity : that will be the day, when men will pursue less eagerly 
the little comforts and conveniences of this miserable life, and 
attach less importance to gold and silver ; when the affairs and 
pleasures of this world, occupying less the thoughts of man, will 
leave the first place to reflections upon futurity, and when form- 
ing the most reasonable judgment of things, men shall prefer that 
which continues to that which passes away, a happiness without 
end to the enjoyments of a moment, the salvation of our immortal 
soul to the well-being of a body, which, notwithstanding all our 
care, gradually proceeds to its rapid and inevitable decay ; that day 
will be, when these words of our Saviour, shall be universally 
heard and felt ; ' ' What doth it avail a man to gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul?" 1 

Who can be more anxious than I myself am to see that splen- 
did day rising upon your country, I, who, for so many years, 
have cherished the hope of it in my heart, and who, by a kind 
of irresistible impulse, have turned my thoughts towards this re- 
ciprocal approximation — I, who am reminded by the blood that 
flows in my veins, that my origin is common with yours — I, who 
esteemed England, before I had seen it, and who esteem and love 
it,« since I have become acquainted with it, and since the hospi- 
tality and kindness with which it has been pleased to honor my 
countrymen? I have endeavored to pay some part of our debt, 
by offering to it this tribute of my labor. that I could have 
rendered it more deserving of its attention ! 

1 " May the moment, which seems fast approaching, when all the faithful, united 
in the same faith, hope and charity, and under the same pastor, shall form but 
one and the same flock!" Admirable words, written by a royal hand, and worthy 
to be exposed to every eye in letters of gold ! that the Christian universe would 
awake and be roused from its lethargic indifference, by the voice of the magnani- 
mous sovereign, who so nobly invites it to unity! — Letter of the King of Prussia 
to the Consistories, Synods, &c, of his States, Sept. 27th, 1817. 

Undoubtedly, in the mind of his majesty as well as in ours, the only pastor is 
eminently Jesus Christ. But in our mind, as no doubt in the mind of the monarch 
also, it is necessary that the eternal and invisible pastor should have upon earth 
a visible vicar, in order that all may be able to see him at their bead, and move 
at his command. 



AND THE REFORMATION IN GENERAL. 575 

In conclusion, if my hand has traced a single word, which 
could give offence, I declare that I had never an intention so to 
do; and I beg to make hereby a sincere apology. I have not to 
fear that my own country should blame me for the prayers I put 
up for her rival. My country is too noble not to esteem a grate- 
ful heart, and not to be convinced that national variances are not 
to extinguish in individuals the remembrance of benefits re- 
ceived: moreover, where governments see nothing but enemies, 
religion ever beholds brethren. 1 

As for you, my dear Sir, wait not for the moment of a general 
reconciliation in order to accomplish your own. The movement 
of nations is slow, because their existence is long : ages are their 
years. Individuals appear for a moment upon the stage, and are 
seen no more. Their days are numbered, and are painful and 
short. Truth has displayed herself to you : more than once have 
you acknowledged this in our mutual communications. What 
shall now withhold you ? Were it necessary for you to renounce 
dignity, honors, and fortune, and to throw yourself and family 
into poverty and degradation, even then your delay would admit 
of no excuse : for what are riches and dignities ? what is the 
world and its perishable pomp, when compared with an eternal 
recompense ? In that case, however, I could conceive a motive 
for your hesitation, though I could not but lament it. But, thanks 
to Providence, you have none of those shackles, those powerful 
chains, which require a more than ordinary fortitude of soul to 
shake off. You are the complete master of your actions and your 
fortune. 

Your relations and friends will be afflicted at the step you will 
have taken. I know the sensibility of your soul ; I see to what 
severe trials it will be put. But Heaven must be purchased, 
and it is well worth the sacrifices which God requires at our hands. 
No doubt you are bound to pay every regard to the tender feel- 
ings of your relations and friends, and to the prejudices of 
education, which you have a long time shared with them. Re- 
double yotur interest and friendship in their regard; let them 

1 TMa was written during the war, in 1813. 



5T6 OX THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND £9 -5*0 - £. 

discover your change chiefly hy your increased attention to their 
happiness. Do more: pray with fervor for them, and encourage 
them to become the judges between themselves and you, by ex- 
amining and weighing your motives. If they agree to this : if 
they enter calmly and sincerely into the examination, which we 
have just completed, there is reason to hope that their complaints 
will daily diminish, and that, after having blamed your conduct, 
they will conclude, with the divine grace, by approving and 
imitating it. 1 

Reader, pray for me. 

"Omnes qui retro oderant, quia ignorabant, siraul ac desinunt ignorare, ces» 
sant et odisse." Tert. Apolog. 



THE END. 



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